Quiet Please, I'm Stalking
by Twisted Flame
Summary: Future fic, original timeline. Kind of my interpretation of a spin off. Chris and his friends are in high school and have to deal with an obsessive crush gone horrbily wrong.
1. Chapter 1

**Future Fic. Kind of my ideas for a Charmed Sons spin off, just... with less Wyatt in this fic at least. Heh.Chris and his friends in High School as juniors, facing an overly-obsessive crush gone wrong.**

**Important: Set in the original timeline but slightly AU, so that Wyatt is not yet evil, and will not be until Chris turns eighteen and Piper isn't dead yet. Oh, and Bridget is only a sophmore.**

**A little background: This is pretty much unecessary, but I'll add it anyway, even though it doesn't really come into the fic. In my head, things go like this. Phoebe, now three times divorced if you include Cole, has a single daughter, Prue.**

**Piper is mostly on her own now with Wyatt and Chris, what with this still being the original timeline and Leo still being an Elder.**

**Paige has a husband and twins, one boy, one girl. Her and her boyfriend never really wanted kids, and then there was this skiing trip... and suddenly they had two. They fell in love with them, though, and got married soon after. They're good parents, just... a little unconventional.**

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**Mmkay. Now THAT'S over... This is _Quiet Please, I'm Stalking_. It's another future fic that I cooked up from my crazy, crazy brain. I would have had this posted a lot earlier, but it didn't happen because I was trying to write it all before I posted again, but I'm kinda stuck at the moment. So I just decided to go ahead and post.**

**Usual shout-out to my Beta, who I adore.**

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Outside the circle of light cast by her lamp, Bridget's bedroom was obscured with shadows. The bed was unmade, the covers heaped and looking vaguely threatening, as if some kind of fat, dark serpent had coiled itself on top of the mattress. Clothes were strewn across the floor and pretty much every available surface. There had been clothes on her desk, but she had shoved them off and onto the floor in front of the door in order to make space for Nixa to spread out her books. She was curled up in the chair beside the window, her can of Diet Coke resting on the arm of the chair and clutched in her hand. 

She took another swig, grumbling to herself about how the caffeine in it should have kicked in after about the third can. But no, it hadn't. It still felt like her mascara had been transformed into lead and was weighing her eyelids down. Every time she closed her eyes, even if it was just for a blink, the prickling in her eyeballs worsened. She groaned, rubbing her eyes and deciding that desperate times called for desperate measures. She pushed herself up off the chair and crossed to her vanity table, opened a drawer and pulled out a box of caffeine tablets. She popped two out of their blisters and palmed them, walking back to her Diet Coke.

"What are you taking?" Nixa asked, turning around in her chair and stopping writing, crinkling her forehead into a frown. The Hunter's blonde hair and flown into her face as a result of the turn and all she had to do, Bridget noticed with resentment, was run a light hand through it to turn it back to perfection. It wasn't fair. Her hair never managed to do that. But, then, Nixa had always been like that. Send her into a crowd of demons and it was unlikely that she'd chip a nail. She would claw her way out of her own coffin looking like a damn cover girl.

Bridget shrugged defensively, putting the pills on her tongue and draining her Coke to take them with. "This is a miniature study group, right? Well, these are miniature study aids." She smiled, nodding her head and, hoping against hope that she had deferred the question, reached back for her book.

Nixa cocked an eyebrow at her and set her pen down. "Huh. Yeah. FYI, calling me just because you realise that I own the Cliff Notes of _The Scarlet Letter, _the night before your essay is due, may I remind you, does not make this a study group. So, spill. What are those?"

Bridget rolled her eyes, letting her hand slap down to her side and snatched the packet from the vanity table's top and throwing them across the room at Nixa. "There. _Mom. _Are you happy now?"

"Caffeine tablets?" Nixa asked, reading the label. "Huh?"

"Yup. Caffeine tablets. Hey, do you want something to eat?" She crossed the room to the door and began picking up the clothes discarded on the floor, jamming them under her arm. "Just go help yourself. I need to go to the hamper." She left the room and came back without the dirty laundry, pushing hair out of her face, not expecting to see Nixa still sitting in the chair that she had left her in. The brunette stamped her foot and scowled. "'Help yourself'. That means full refrigerator privileges. What are you still doing here?"

"I already ate, firstly. Secondly, I'm still waiting for a reason for your insane caffeine intake. Fobbing me off with collecting your dirty laundry really won't help that."

Bridget glowered, flouncing over her chair. She snatched up the Coke can and crushed it, dumping it on the floor with its fallen brethren. She then folded her arms across her chest, gripping at both sleeves of her top with her fingers. "Just so you know," she said, looking up, "if you laugh, you die. Got it?"

"So it's funny?"

"Oh, for you, it'll be freaking hilarious," Bridget grumbled. "For me? Not so. It's… Okay, you know that movie where those people can't go to sleep because they'll get killed in their dreams?"

"_Nightmare on Elm Street_?"

"Bingo. Anyway, yeah. That's my predicament right there."

Nixa looked horrified. She got out of her seat. "Demonic trouble? And you didn't tell us? Oh my _God, _Bridget…"

"I wish it was demonic trouble," Bridget said sullenly, looking back down. A slight blush of red spread across her cheeks. "I can deal with that. You know, stab, stab and crisis over. Okay, so I won't die per se, I exaggerated a little, but I wish that it was just dying."

"Okay… I've gone from being pissed at you to totally out-of-my-depth confused. What are you talking about?"

Bridget sighed, biting her lip. "I've… been having these dreams. These really scary, disturbing dreams that make me want to stay awake forever."

"Like… Hunter disturbing?"

Bridget shook her head, poking her finger around in a small hole in the worn fabric of the chair's arm. "No. Not supernatural dreams. I already said that. I can deal with those. These are cold sweat, sitting bolt upright dreams." Some of the thread snapped and she continued to pull, eventually tearing so she could see about an inch square of yellow stuffing.

"What about?" Nixa prompted, sitting back down in her chair.

"Remember, you laugh, you die," Bridget said, savagely pleading. "And, if you tell everyone, I swear to God—" She hated the panic in her voice but she couldn't control the fear that was making it waver.

"Just tell me!"

Bridget looked down at her work, suddenly finding her half-completed essay fascinating. She picked at the corner of the page, tearing it off and trying to build up enough confidence to tell Nixa. "Ben," she blurted quickly. "Ben. I've been dreaming about Ben."

Nixa frowned. "Ben? Just Ben? And these dreams are disturbing… why? Dreaming about Ben has stopped you sleeping? That— Oh! OH! Oh my GOD! Bridget!"

"I can't control my subconscious!" Bridget wailed in her defence. "There's nothing I can do! I go to sleep and suddenly, we're making out. I mean, it doesn't make sense because I don't think of Ben in that way at ALL. But we're making out and then it's all WHOA, shirtless Ben and then he, he, he pulls at _my _shirt and stuff and—"

"Stop! I take it back! I wanted you to share but there is such a thing as over sharing! Ew! I mean, he's _Ben… _Ben! And you're Bridget. It's so _wrong_… Ben, your best friend? My best friend? Remember that? _Why?"_

Bridget hid her face in her hands. "I know," she moaned. "I know… So far, I've woken up with my skin crawling before it gets anywhere past PG13 but one night I might not wake up in time, you know?"

Nixa pulled a disgusted face. "There is so no advice that I can offer. I mean, what are you meant to say to that?"

"I want to die…" Bridget said, still not looking up, knowing that her face was burning. "Please kill me…"

Nixa looked down at the caffeine tablets on the desk and picked them up, crossing the room to Bridget. She poked her friend in the shoulder with the packet. "Here," she said. "You're going to be needing these."

_**Quiet Please, I'm Stalking**_

Ben was chewing on his pen lid, shredding the thin red plastic with his teeth. The pen itself was absently scrawling doodles all over his pad. He twisted his mouth in thought and jammed the pen back into its lid in his mouth, cocking his head and adding a series of random spirals over the mass that he had already drawn in the margin with a different colour. He sighed and threw his pen down onto the page, rubbing his eyes.

The bell rang for lunch and startled him. He jerked and looked at his watch, shaking his head when he saw the time. He stretched and turned in his seat as students began to pour into the quad, searching for a trace of one of his friends. He finally saw Chris with his head down and his arm deep in his backpack. Ben stood and waved the witch-whitelighter over, but Chris didn't see. Ben rolled his eyes heavily and sat back down, deciding that Chris could make his own way over.

Next he saw Nixa. The blonde was cradling her cell phone between her ear and her shoulder, using her free hands to adjust her hat and brush her hair. She didn't look happy and was talking animatedly into the phone, scowling. She looked up momentarily and saw Ben. She gave a quick wave of recognition with her hairbrush and made a beeline for him, finishing fixing her hat and grabbing Chris's sleeve and dragging him along with her.

Bridget was last out. There were people on the steps in front of her, and she glared at them and even yelled a little, but they didn't move. Annoyed, she cast them one last blistering look and leapt over the stone banister, landing softly on the grass and stalking towards the table. Ben rolled his eyes again and looked up to greet Chris and Nixa. The blonde slammed her cell phone closed and tossed it down onto the Formica tabletop, glaring at it. She threw her bag down as well and sat down heavily, putting her face into her hands.

"What's wrong?" Ben asked concernedly.

"Oh, my parents just don't talk to each other, that's all. They've both booked things that they need to be away for that overlap for an entire ten days, which leaves me at home looking after everything _and _Lenora. I'm just annoyed, that's all, because… blah. It's okay. I'm calm now. I'm calm. Stress has proven to be as bad as smoking for causing premature ageing… I'm cool. Wonderful. So. What are we doing? What's happening?"

"Well, Ben has been cutting class to sit here and doodle," Chris remarked, frowning as he flipped through his friend's notepad.

Ben snatched the pad back and shoved it into his bag. "I have not," he retorted, wrenching the zip closed. "I was given permission to. It was meant to inspire me to write… something about…" He broke off and frowned. "My given subject, which I don't even remember. Hence the doodles. Hey, Bridget."

"Hey," Bridget said shortly, putting her bag down on the table.

Nixa smirked at her, her lips twisted in wry amusement. "Hey Bridget," she said in a singsong voice. "How was your evening?"

"Okay, let me make this clear," Bridget said deliberately. "I've upgraded it. It's no longer a death threat, it's a death _promise._ Capiche?"

"Oh, God, that's tragic," Ben said. "Who says _capiche _anymore?"

Bridget hit him upside the head and sat down dignifiedly, letting out the breath she'd been holding. "So, what's going on around here anyway? No drug gangs to bust?"

"Nope. As soon as they see you walking up, they all flush their stashes," Ben said.

"Damn straight," Bridget said, stretching languidly and yawning widely.

Chris sat down opposite Bridget and then broke into a grin. "Bridget! Look! It's your stalker!"

Bridget groaned, placing her head on the table. "Has he seen me?" she asked, pulling her hood over her head and wishing that she could be a chameleon.

"Well, he's staring right at you," Ben said, cocking his head. "I'm guessing that's a yes?"

"This has got to stop," Bridget moaned. "I can't have a freshman trailing after me constantly like a puppy dog. Why? Why me? Nixa is so much hotter than me, and he isn't drooling all over her. What did _I_ do to deserve this? Don't answer that," she added, anticipating that Ben was about to add a snarky comment. "Or you will be singing castrato."

"I think it's cute," Nixa declared, smiling to herself. "He likes you. You're probably his first crush. It's sweet."

"But he's _fourteen_. I mean, shouldn't he be playing with… Power Rangers or Action Man? Come on, Ben still does and he's seventeen."

"Damn you. How did you find the secret panel in my closet?" He narrowed his hazel eyes into a glare but couldn't come up with the strength to hold it there for long and just ended up grinning.

Chris snorted. "Huh. See, you're worried about her finding the secret panel in your closet. I'd be more worried that she's been in your bedroom without you knowing."

Ben shrugged nonchalantly. "Come on. If it's believable that _Bridget _can have a stalker then what makes it so terribly hard to grasp that I have one? Speaking of which, do you know his name?"

"Ken," Bridget mumbled disgustedly. "I mean, what a name that is. Why would anyone's parents name their kid after a plastic doll that is _so _not anatomically correct? They should put that on the box, by the way. I was nine before I realised that that was nowhere near what real guys had in their shorts. But, yeah. Isn't that just handing your kid a complex?"

"That, and Barbie dumped Ken's ass," Ben added absently, picking at his nails. "He's got to live with—" He caught Nixa, Chris and Bridget staring at him incredulously. "What! She did! She's now shacked up with some… surfer dude whose name I forget. Don't look at me like that! Why are you looking at me like that? It was on the Internet!"

"Sure…" Bridget smirked, drawing the world out. "We believe you."

Ben shot Bridget a withering look and then delved into his bag looking for the lunch that he had packed. His three friends took their cues from him and produced their various foodstuffs from their bags. Nixa took a bite of her sandwich and chewed. She swallowed, about to say something, but she was interrupted by a shadow and a voice.

"Hi, B-Bridget," the freshman stuttered, swallowing hard. He pressed his lips together, gripping the strap of his backpack so tightly that his knuckles glowed white and using the other hand to shift floppy brown hair on his head.

Bridget offered Ken a wintry smile in response and pulled out a bottle of juice from her bag. "So, yeah. Ben has a Barbie Doll collection, huh? Who knew?"

Ben glared at Bridget but then smirked, his eyes dancing. "Oh, no, look, you lost your table," he said to Ken. Some sophomores had invaded Ken's vacated seat. "That sucks. You should come and sit here. I'll shift up; you can sit next to Bridget."

Ben would have dropped dead, foaming at the mouth with his still-beating heart pulsating in front of his eyes if looks could kill. Bridget was clenching her teeth so hard that she was afraid that she was going to break one of them inside her mouth. "There's not much room, really," she bit out at Ben, clenching her fist.

"Come on; don't be so greedy with the space, _Bridget_. There's plenty of room. Or is this about you being fat again? Because, you are so clearly not. I mean, look at you. You're thin and toned and very attractive. I would date you but you are, in fact, so stunning that you intimidate me. Don't you agree, Chris?"

Chris blinked, looking temporarily thrown. "Um, wha— Uh, yeah. Yeah. Why someone hasn't snapped you up I just do not know."

Bridget turned her glare on Chris, this time adding a jot of disbelief in. "You as well! I swear, I am going to tear out your ribcages, start a hat collection and then make tacos out of your livers."

"And, what's more, she's so modest. She doesn't like anyone pointing out her positive traits," Nixa chipped in sunnily, brushing imaginary crumbs from her top and smiling. "So come, sit. What's up?"

"OW!" Ken yelped as soon as he sat down, delving under the table and rubbing at his shin.

"Oh, did I kick you?" Bridget said. "Sorry, kid. I was aiming for Ben. And Chris. And… not so much Nixa, because she'll kick me back but I was plotting something. I think I'll go put a green sock in with all of her whites."

Nixa narrowed her eyes, affronted. "I'll turn your entire wardrobe tie-dye."

"You wouldn't dare," Bridget said, staring the blonde down.

"Oh, wouldn't I?"

"Before you start tearing each other's clothes off and this gets very Pay-per-View, let's remind ourselves that we have a kid's brain here that it's gonna screw up. So, let's save this for later. Preferably on webcam." Bridget punched him in the shoulder and Nixa threw the last piece of her sandwich at him before leaning over the table and hitting him as well. Ben paused, but then nodded sagely. "Yeah, I think I deserved that from Nixa but Bridget? Anti-voyeurism? I'm shocked."

Bridget smiled, sickly sweet. "Hm. Yeah. I wonder how much money I would make out of filming me making sure that the only food you'll ever eat in your life will be through a straw?"

"A lot," Ken said suddenly, squirming in his seat when the four older teenagers turned to look at him in surprise. "What? A lot of people don't like him."

Ben snorted, twisting his mouth in thought. "Okay… Just gimme a minute. I'm sure that the hurt and the anger will kick in any minute now… There it is. Oh, wait, no… Hang on… Well, huh. It didn't. Thank God for my apathy, otherwise their rejection might have stung somewhat." He flicked Nixa's crust from his shirt to the floor.

Ken looked confused, perhaps having entirely missed Ben's sarcasm. "I saw you the other day, Bridget," Ken said. "You were grocery shopping."

"God will be pleased that giving you eyes wasn't a total waste of time," Bridget said. "And, yeah, I was. My parents are… somewhere doing something and I ate everything. I was Mother Hubbard, except I wasn't getting a dog a bone, more like getting me some Hershey's. But we lacked Hershey's, because I ate it all. Like everything else in the house. Hence my supermarket trip that you saw me on."

"My, my parents g-go away a lot too."

"Is that why you were there?" Bridget asked, picking at her bag moodily and trying to distance herself from the conversation.

"Oh, no, my parents aren't away _now_… But they might be soon. You never know," Ken said, leaning towards Bridget so much as he spoke that Ben started to get uncomfortable with the invasion of his personal space.

"Siblings to keep you company?" Bridget asked mechanically, still not looking at him and sounding bored.

"I have a sister," Ken volunteered.

"Go you. Me? I'm an only child."

"Well, she _is_ my half-sister," Ken corrected quickly. "And, and, and she's older than me. By like six years or so. So I don't really count her as a sister. Not really. So, I'm like an only child too. Sort of."

"Sure, if you mentally snip out the part where you, I don't know, _have a sibling_," Bridget said dryly, pulling a face. She searched her memory for another topic of conversation, feeling obliged to come up with something despite the fact that this was all her friends' damn fault in the first place and had nothing to do with her. Damn her parents and their ability to instil manners on her. Damn them to hell. "Uh… So, do you like… Um… do you… Take classes? Which classes are you taking?" Bridget was hoping to any deity that was listening, even one of those ones that lived in trees, that he would find her the most dull person on the planet and just leave. So far, it wasn't working too well.

"Well, there's English 9…"

Bridget grunted sympathetically, pulling a face. "Ick. Yeah. I remember that."

"I don't like it," Ken said. "It's..." he paused, struggling for a word to slot into the sentence gap.

"I like it," Bridget said, cutting in on him. "I like English. It's very important. Sometime, however, it can be ick but that's just something that you've got to work through, right?"

"Definitely. English is good, I suppose. Yeah, it's really important and all, but it can be… ick sometimes. But good. I like it."

"Well, this is _fun_," Ben cut in sarcastically. "There was a catfight about to break out and I traded it for _this?_"

Chris made a noise of agreement. "Yeah. If I were you, I'd sue every single member of your family that dropped you on your head when you were a baby and damaged your… cavity in which your one lonely synapse sits."

"You mean there's actually oneup there?" Bridget asked in amazement, tapping on Ben's skill. "You know, it's true. You really _do _learn something new every day."

Ben rolled his eyes. "Well, you're all boring and I'm fun. And so, to emphasise this, I'm going to get my pad back out and work through my lunch break because otherwise the editor will kill me and it'll be, 'Ben, you failed Journalism' and _no one _fails Journalism. I could get a trophy, though… Hm…"

"If you spent as much time working as you do gazing into space and thinking up snarky commentary, you would get so much more done," Nixa commented. "And that reminds me. I need to go and do some work of my own. If you want me, head towards the library. I'll be the one rocking the joint."

"Sounds fun," Chris said. "Are we all still on for tonight, by the way?"

Ben nodded. "Coffee at The Cabana? Of course."

"The Cabana?" Ken echoed, frowning. "I don't think I've heard of that…"

"Caffeine Cabana on Geary Boulevard," Ben explained. "We just call it The Cabana because it's our home from home."

"I'm there," Nixa said. "As always."

"Ditto," Bridget said, swinging her bag onto her back too. "I am, however, out of here. I might come to the library with you, Nixa. If you don't mind me talking whilst you're raising the roof, that is."

"Talking? Could this be a very interesting topic that we recently discussed?" Nixa asked coyly, a smirk twisting her mouth upwards. "Because I could totally ditch Biology for that."

Chris cocked his head to one side and narrowed his eyes in confusion. "Secret code? Did I miss something here?"

"Yup," Bridget said shortly, standing up and giving no indication that she was about to continue. "Hell yes. Now, Nixa?" She started walking backwards away from them slowly, beckoning Nixa to follow with her eyes. "We have work to do."

"Oh, by the way, just checking," Ben said, swivelling in his seat to call to the girls' retreating backs, grinning at them. "Tonight, will you be incorporating some kind of pillow fight into your webcam routine?"

Nixa and Bridget stopped walking, turning slowly on their heels to glare at Ben. They exchanged affronted looks before striding back over to Ben as one. Bridget grabbed his shoulders and pulled him backwards off of his seat, sending him tumbling practically head-over-heels to the floor, and Nixa grabbed Ben's bag and stalked off with it, dumping it in a trashcan.

"Was that a 'no'?" Ben asked, his voice muffled by half a mouthful of the leg of his jeans.

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**Aaaaaaand end. All comments welcome.**

_**Twisted Flame**_


	2. Chapter 2

"I'm dying. Seriously, I am dying," Bridget moaned, rubbing her eyes. "I am so tired it's not even funny. I have bags under my eyes that I could put groceries in. This sucks."

"Maybe you can take something to just knock you out? Temazepam or something?" Nixa suggested helpfully, opening her pencil case and grabbing a pen.

"Are you kidding me?" Bridget said, shaking her head violently. "Hell no. I might get trapped in one of those dreams. And then I would have to get a blowtorch and burn off all my skin. No. That is not an option."

Nixa sighed, conceding with a tilt of her head. "Okay. So maybe Chris or Ben can whip you up a potion for a dreamless sleep?"

Bridget pulled a face. "Yeah, but then they'd want to know why. And I don't wanna tell them."

Nixa frowned, twisting her mouth in thought and tapping her pen on the table. "Maybe… maybe if you acted out your dreams with Ben, they'd go—" She caught Bridget's nauseated yet murderous look and stopped. "Yeah, that was a stupid idea. Okay, so, uh… Ooh. What if you didn't act out your dreams with Ben, but with some other guy? That could work — you know, release your tension before you go to sleep?"

Bridget mulled it over in her mind, punctuating the silence was a couple of musing noises. "You know…" she said eventually, nodding slowly at Nixa, "that might just work…"

"That's because I'm a genius," Nixa said, flipping her wrist over so that she could check her watch. "You have five minutes left of lunch. How are you going to get a guy in five minutes?"

"Well, let's just say that your Cliff Notes really didn't do me much good anyway, and it would be a lot prettier scene if I just didn't turn up to English."

"Hm…" Nixa said judgementally, choosing not to say anything else and letting the raise of her eyebrows communicate her feelings for her. "Then I guess you should be finding a closet, huh?"

Bridget nodded absently, gnawing on her bottom lip. "Well, yeah, but I kind of need someone to be in there _with _me, otherwise it's just Bridget. In a closet. Which isn't tackling my subconscious at all. It's just sad."

"You could just grab the first cute guy that you see," Nixa suggested with a shrug. "Just to clarify: You are that desperate, right?"

Bridget nodded quickly. "Totally. If I don't get some sleep then I am going to go crazy. And that will get ugly."

"Problem solved then," Nixa said briskly, putting on a business-like manner. "You hide in a closet, wait for guy, drag him in and… ew. All in…" she checked her watch again. "Three minutes. Good luck."

"You know, instead of wishing me good luck you could have the decency to find me a leprechaun or something."

"Yes, because a rainbow wouldn't look at all conspicuous appearing in a library, would it?"

"Have you ever made a point in your life that wasn't entirely valid?" Bridget said sulkily, pouting. "Just wish me good luck once more and we'll call it even, okay?"

_**Quiet Please, I'm Stalking**_

Ugh. Lunch had ended just as she had slipped in here, so the massive throng of people that had come back into the school to get to their lessons meant that she hadn't been able to snag a guy. Twisting her mouth and frowning in annoyance she huffed a frustrated sigh. She was peering out of the crack in the door at the narrow slice of the totally-devoid-of-suitable-candidates hallway that it allowed her to see and she was about to give up when she heard footsteps. Her eyes lit up and she readied herself to pounce. She couldn't quite believe that she was doing this. This was sluttiness to the max, but what could a girl do? Plus, it might be kind of fun. In a weird, making-out-with-a-stranger kind of way.

She opened the door a little more and discovered that the footsteps' owner was Wyatt. Cursing any and every deity that she could think of — even those ones that lived in rocks — she hesitated. Was she about to do this? Was she about to possibly screw up the friendship that she had with Wyatt just so she could sleep better at night? Wyatt was just passing in front of the closet when she got a flash of one of her dreams. She practically cried out in disgust and lunged forward, grabbing the senior's arm and yanking him backwards into the closet.

Wyatt gave a startled yell as his momentum sent him crashing into a bucket. He tripped over it and landed against a stack of paper towels, tipping them over. Bridget quickly closed the door as the sound of the cascading bundles threatened to give them both away.

"Sssh!" she hissed, pressing a finger to her lips. "Shut up! You're going to get us into trouble!"

"Us?" Wyatt yelped, managing to claw himself out from underneath the paper towels. "Us! What the hell is this 'Us' thing all about, you crazy bitch? Who— Bridget! That's you, isn't it? What the hell are you doing?"

Bridget reached up and turned the light on, flooding the tiny space with light. She suppressed a giggle at Wyatt, his bag the wrong way round and threatening to throttle him and his lower half buried with paper towels and had to keep hard from sniggering while she answered. "Well… It's kind of complicated…"

"You've finally gone NUTS?"

"I said complicated, doofus. That is in no way complex, is it?"

Wyatt sighed, rubbing his head with his hands. "Okay… How long is this going to take to explain? More importantly, how much money can I pay you to let me go?"

Bridget snorted. "Pfft. You're not a hostage, Wyatt. You would never be my hostage. I couldn't put up with you long enough for my demands to be met and I'd kill you. And then I'd have no leverage, and I'd get shot and—"

"Again: How long is this going to take to explain?"

Bridget sniffed. "Fine. I will just show you. Impatience is… not a virtue. I didn't get that right, did I?" She shook her head. "Never mind. This had better work." She grabbed his shirt and hauled him to his feet, then dragged him towards her. She stepped up onto one of the bundles of paper towels and began kissing him earnestly, keeping a fierce grip on him as he tried to back away from her. She tilted her head, before biting lightly on his bottom lip. He stopped trying to pull away and leaned in towards her as she grazed her front teeth over his bottom lip and then started kissing him again. She broke apart, punching his shoulder. "Kiss _me_ for God's sake. I can't do all of the work or this won't work."

"W-what won't work?"

Bridget punched him again. "It doesn't matter. Just kiss me or I'll break your face."

"No roses? No movie? No chocolates? That's it. Stop the presses. Romance is dead and Bridget Vance was caught with the smoking gun."

Bridget glared at him and then grabbed his shirt again, dragging him towards her. She kissed  
his chin and then moved down until she was kissing his neck. "If you won't kiss me, then I will _make _you kiss me," she said defiantly, biting down and sucking. "Got it?"

"Bridget, I… B-Bridget. What… what are you DOING? Stop this! Are you possessed?" He shoved her away again and she stumbled backwards off the paper towels and into the door.

"Ugh. _No. _I am not possessed," Bridget duhed, rolling her eyes heavily. "What is it with people and telling me that? No. This is of my own free will. Now. Kiss me, tell me I'm beautiful and this entire ugly episode will be over and I can go home."

"But you have… three lessons after this, no?"

"If ONE more person makes a valid point today then I am going to SCREAM!" Bridget yelled through gritted teeth.

"It's worse than I thought. You're not possessed, you're just unhinged." He looked down guiltily at the mess that he had made on the floor and began gathering up the spilled packets of paper towels, dumping them on top of their stack. "I don't get this. What's going on? Why do you want me to kiss you?"

"Does a girl need a reason?"

"No, but she needs a straitjacket." He glanced up to Bridget, who had pressed her lips into a thin line. She had a hand on her hip and was tapping her foot, glaring at him with a cocked eyebrow. "If I kiss you, can I go? Please?"

Bridget nodded. "It'll be kiss, run and sooooo never tell. Promise."

Wyatt rolled his eyes, hesitating for just a second before throwing away the rest of his reserves. He leaned forward, gently brushed Bridget's hair out of the way and kissed her gently on the lips, deepening it momentarily before reverting back to kissing her lightly, and then pulled away from her. "Happy?"

Bridget swallowed, blinking heavily. "I-I-I… Uh…"

Wyatt grinned, nodded satisfactorily with his tongue in his cheek and left, shaking his head on the way out. "Good," he said, closing the door behind him.

_**Quiet Please, I'm Stalking**_

Bridget rolled her eyes and righted Ben's fallen mug. She was lucky that Ben practically inhaled his coffee or she would be seriously scalded right now. She placed it next to Ben's first mug and watched with wry amusement as he began trying to build a house out of sugar packets. She caught Nixa grinning at her staring and immediately scowled back down at her coffee, kicking the blonde Hunter underneath the table. She sighed, remembering her predicament, and grabbed her spoon to slowly spin the froth on the top of her coffee around. It wasn't fair. They never gave you enough cinnamon sprinkles. Without them, your coffee was not really a coffee, was it? It was just dull brown water that gave you a buzz. Especially because she's _ordered _extra cinnamon. She _always _ordered extra cinnamon. So why couldn't the barista get it right?

Glaring at the foam, she dipped a finger into the tepid liquid and fished out the little cinnamon that she could see and licked it off. She'd been toying absently with her coffee for maybe half an hour, muttering to herself about no good baristas, and the beverage was now undrinkable anyway.

Ben succeeded in lining up a row of four sugar packet pyramids on the tabletop and tried laying one on top of it to make a second storey but the entire thing collapsed. He glowered at the packets and began shoving them untidily into their holder as if they had personally insulted him.

"You're such a baby when you can't do something," Nixa informed him patiently, trying her hardest to resist patting him on the head patronisingly. "One thing goes wrong and you throw all of your toys out of the pram."

Ben rolled his eyes and didn't answer, instead choosing to turn around in his seat so that he was sitting in the corner of the booth's brown leather corner couch. He looked out of the window, watching the lively sidewalk filled with various people walking to and fro, all scurrying about like ants. They were all black, white and grey anonymous faces, people returning home from the office. Every now and then, there would be a flash of colour, signifying a shopper, but it was quickly swallowed up as its wearer hurried home. The sky was darkening. It looked like rain.

"What's wrong with your coffee, Bridget?" Chris asked, finally getting annoyed with her eyeing it as if it had personally offended her.

"There's not enough cinnamon," Bridget pouted. "I mean, what does 'extra cinnamon, please' mean to these people? Stingy bastards."

"Did you ask for more?" Nixa asked, cocking an eyebrow.

"Why should I have to?" Bridget answered angrily. "It's a cinnamon coffee! It's _meant _to have enough cinnamon in it."

"So that would be a no," Chris said cheekily, grinning at her over the rim of his glass of iced coffee. He tilted it back and drained the glass, putting it back down on the table, laughing at Bridget glaring mutinously at him.

"OW!" Ben yelped suddenly, jumping up and hitting his knee on the underside of the table. "Ow! What did _I _do?"

"Wrong leg _again_?" Bridget said disbelievingly, looking under the table. "I swear that that was Chris..."

"Uh, well, it wasn't," Ben snapped sarcastically, bending to rub his shin. "That is so gonna bruise… I mean, the one time I didn't do anything…"

Chris pulled his legs up so that he was curled up in his seat, tucking them safely out of the way of Bridget's vengeful kicks. "I think she's losing her touch."

"Do you want to come over here and say that?"

"Oh, for God's sake," Nixa grumbled, massaging her forehead. "Play nice, _children. _Seriously, being out with you lot is like being a nursery attendant." She rolled her eyes and looked back down at her mug, scraping the rapidly-hardening foam from around the rim of the mug with her nail before sucking it clean. "Don't make me put you in separate corners." She looked over at Bridget's mug, slamming her hand down on the table. "Are you going to sit there and mope over that all day?" She turned, snagging a waiter's arm as he went past. "Hey," she said to him, flashing him a smile. "Would you mind bringing me a cinnamon shaker? Please? Pretty please?"

"Uh, yeah, sure. Give me a second…" He picked up the three empty mugs and Chris's empty glass from the table and put them on his tray before walking off.

"There, happy now?" Nixa asked exasperatedly, settling down in her seat again. "You can tip the entire contents of the shaker onto your coffee now if you really want." She began picking at her biscotti, conveying practically a crumb at a time from between her fingers to her mouth. Not that it wasn't good — the biscottis were never anything but here — but she had a new dress that she had to buy so that she could go to a charity ball for her father's firm and eating biscotti was so not a good idea. And yet… She broke off a large chunk and ate it. They were so damn _good…_

Bridget pouted. "But it's ill-gotten cinnamon," she muttered. "Not as good."

"'Ill-gotten'? What does that mean?"

Bridget cocked an eyebrow at her, then batted her eyelashes exaggeratedly. "'Oh, _please _get me the cinnamon shaker. Come on, look down my top and then get me a cinnamon shaker'…"

"What!" Nixa shrieked. "How— What… I do NOT sound like that! And I didn't invite him to look down my top!"

"Oh, you might as well have done. Your boobs got me a cinnamon shaker."

Nixa gaped, at a loss for words. "I… I— You… What! Bridget, what the hell is wrong with you? I don't know what your problem is."

Ben sighed. "Okay. How about this. Yes, Nixa, the waiter did look down your top. As has every guy that we passed today. And, I'm guessing, that is why you put that top on this morning. Bridget, you wanted your cinnamon, so who cares how you get it as long as you get it? And shut up about it. And perhaps Nixa did get it by flirting and that could be a lesson to you. Try smiling and being nice and you could get somewhere. Happy?" Both Nixa and Bridget narrowed their eyes, cocking their heads at him.

"You know… I think I should feel insulted, but I'm oddly placated. Huh. How did you do that?" Nixa asked, sensing the waiter coming up next to her and placing her hand out without looking at him. "Thanks." She passed the shaker over to Bridget.

"I can flirt plenty well, thank you," Bridget said. "You don't know what you're talking about."

Ben flicked his eyebrows up. "Are you kidding me? Bridget, this is you flirting: 'Kiss me or I'll crush you'."

"I can too flirt!"

Ben was about to answer, but caught sight of someone lingering on the other side of the window. Turning his head, he peered through the writing on the glass and saw Ken. Despite the fact that he had had suspicions that someone was there, the freshman still startled him. Ken blinked, looking like a deer caught in headlights, but then waved. Ben raised a hand slowly in response to the greeting, giving the kid a tight smile. Okay, it had been amusing before but now it was starting to get a little creepy. However… "Hey, Bridget. Prove you can flirt. Your stalker's just arrived."

"Oh, encourage him? That will be a smart move, Ben," Bridget bit out malignantly, glaring at the door as it opened, admitting Ken. "What the hell is he doing? It's bad enough that he's at school and now he's turning up here?"

"Well, this is just a thought, but, maybe, he _likes _you?" Chris suggested, smirking at Bridget, glad that he had tucked his legs out of her reach.

"What's there to like!" Bridget said exasperatedly. "I'm bad-tempered, poor at conversation and prone to hitting people. Why does he like me?"

"Because you're hot and he likes assertive, older women?" Ben tried. He paused, crinkling his forehead in thought. "Isn't there an entire TV channel for that?"

"You would know," Bridget deadpanned as Ken came up to their table. "Ken. What are you doing here?"

"It's a coffeehouse, right? Well, uh, I'm here for… coffee. I just thought that I-I would, you know?"

"Sure," Bridget muttered, picking up the cinnamon shaker and moodily sprinkling some on top of her coffee. "Great." She began stirring the orange-y flakes into her drink slowly, focussing intently on her task so that she didn't have to look at the hovering freshman.

"I should probably go and order c-coffee, right?" the freshman stuttered in Bridget's direction, watching her intently as she tended to her drink, wishing that she would look up.

"Like you said, it's a coffeehouse," she replied, scooping her cold coffee onto her spoon and letting it drizzle back into the mug. "It would be a good idea."

Ken smiled and bobbed his head awkwardly at her, then at the rest of them sitting at the table and turned, spying the counter behind him and walking off towards it almost dreamily, clearly not in his own habitat.

Bridget shoved her coffee away angrily, spilling some into the saucer. "Well, I'm officially put off that," she said bitterly, glaring at the coffee cup and wishing that it was alive so that she could kill it. "What is he doing here?"

"Wait… Yeah. That was déjà vu," Ben said, taking a tip from Chris and crossing his legs Indian style. "Asking a question twice doesn't get an answer any quicker."

"It's because he _likes _you," Nixa said, reiterating her earlier answer. "Why is that so hard for you to accept?"

"Because he's just a kid and has no idea about what he likes or doesn't? That, and I didn't sign up for a stalker! This is creepy! Why don't you see that?"

"I think it's mainly because it's so funny," Chris told her. "Yeah, that's it."

Ken came back to the table, concentrating deeply on his cup of coffee so that it didn't slop out onto the saucer. He set it down on the table, breathing a small sigh of relief as he did so, and slid into the booth, forcing Nixa to budge up which, in turn, dislodged Ben from his corner. Grumbling at Nixa jabbing him in the ribs, the witch shuffled along the booth, annoyed at being dislodged and starting to wish that Ken hadn't appeared at all, despite the amount of fun he was having torturing Bridget with it.

"Is that a cinnamon coffee?" Bridget asked, already knowing the answer.

"Yeah," Ken said, nodding and take a sip. He tried to hide a grimace but failed, then reached for Ben's sugar packets. "They do really good cinnamon coffees here. I really like them."

"Uh-huh," Bridget muttered dryly as Ken set about pouring five packets of sugar into his drink and stirring them in. "It sure looks like you're enjoying it."

"What? Oh… Well, uh, um, you know if you're g-gonna have a caffeine rush you might as well have a sugar r-rush too, right?" the freshman sputtered awkwardly, crumpling the empty paper packets and tossing them into the middle of the table. He took another small sip of his coffee and set it back down in his saucer.

Silence settled over the table for a second before Nixa suddenly felt a spark of memory. "Dammit! Dry-cleaning!" She got out her cell phone and flipped it open, working the keys with her thumbs at her usual lightning speed. "Crap. Sara will just be leaving… I'll have to pay her overtime." She paused, twisting her mouth in thought and then continued to text.

"Why don't you just go and get it yourself?" Ben asked, rolling his eyes heavily.

"Because I have no car with me, the dry cleaner is on the other side of the city and I'm not walking all of the way over there, grabbing four dresses, two wraps, five suits, eight ties and my sweater then walking all of the way home again. Besides, there's no time. I'll get there and they'll be closed. It just won't happen." She finished texting and stared intently at the screen as the message sent. "There. Thank God. I was gonna wear that sweater tomorrow."

"Well, with that crisis adverted…" Bridget muttered dryly, also rolling her eyes. "So, uh, the weather, anyone?"

"On Sunday night I set out my outfits for the week. That way, I can be ready for school in an hour," Nixa said patiently. "And, if I'm late, I'll be driving fast and I'll hit an old lady and she'll go flying and smack this demon with her cane and he'll get pissed and start the apocalypse and there. There's your end of the world scenario. Happy?"

Ben coughed pointedly. "Metaphorical demon," he explained to Ken. "Ignore her. She's big on the metaphors when she's finished sending her poor housekeeper across town when she should be heading home."

Nixa sniffed. "I said I'd pay her overtime. It's more convenient for her to get the stuff, that's all. And she won't mind. And, yes, I enjoy using literary techniques when I lack my sweater."

Chris suddenly burst out laughing, rubbing a hand over his eyes. "Did you leave your brain somewhere today?"

"No, it's in its jar," Nixa replied evenly. "And of course I enjoy using literary techniques when I lack my sweater. They make up for the hole in my life created by not having it. It's cashmere."

Ben groaned, rolled his eyes and leaned forward, banging his head against the table. "Yeah, so the weather, Bridget? It looks like it's going to rain," he said when he'd sat back up. It was scarily easy to forget that, sometimes, Nixa was just like any other SoCal bimbo. The girl that he so often trusted with his back had just said that her life was incomplete because her sweater was at the cleaners. It made him wonder why he hadn't had an axe between his shoulder blades a little while ago now. Well, actually, he knew. It was because Nixa, despite sometimes having airhead tendencies, was a damn good friend and Hunter and so much more intelligent that she looked and sometimes sounded.

Ken blinked, seemingly not following what was going on at all. As the table lapsed into a few seconds of silence he shook his head, frowning, and turned to Bridget. "What are you doing this w-weekend, Bridget?"

Bridget shrugged exaggeratedly, exhaling through her lips. She looked into the distance as if she were thinking. "Oh, right. I'm busy this weekend. All weekend."

"All of it?" Ken asked, his voice falling with disappointment. "You don't have, like, a spare hour or anything?"

Bridget huffed, almost pulling off apologetic and disappointed. "No… I mean, on Saturday I'm shopping—" Nixa promptly began choking on her biscotti in surprise, so Bridget glared at her "—so then isn't good for me and then on Sunday I have 2500 words to conjure up for English."

"And that's all gonna take you forty-eight hours, Bridget?" Ben asked in disbelief. "That's a LOT of shopping. What are you buying?"

Bridget, sure that she was grinding her teeth down to her gums, gave a forced, feral, shark's grin. "Oh, you know me. Anything that takes my fancy. That's why it's going to take so long."

"I know _you_," Ben said. "Sure I know _you. _This new, shopaholic Bridget I do not know. Is this another one of your personalities?"

"Yes!" Bridget blurted out suddenly, her eyes lighting up. "Yes! This is! This is one of my many, many personalities." She turned to Ken. "You see, I'm sick. In fact, I'm insane. So insane, in fact, that I don't even know which person I'm being half the time. I'm crazy. Totally crazy. You don't want to see me when I forget my medication… It's not attractive. _I'm_ not attractive."

Ken laughed, picking up his mug again. "You're not _that _crazy. Just enough to be really cool."

Bridget flashed him another tight smile, jigging her foot up and down underneath the table to try and vent some of her anger as she thought of her next move. "Aw, thank you, you're sweet. But, no, really. I'm crazy. I think I get it from my dad. Not that I've seen him since he got put on Death Row, but I think that's where I get my nuttiness from."

Chris smirked at the tabletop, picking up one of the coasters and tapping it on the table, letting his fingers slide down to the bottom and then turning it so he was repeating it with each of the four sides. Bridget was getting inventive. He sneaked a look upwards at Ken's reaction. The freshman had blinked and paled a little, and had taken another sip of his coffee to gain thinking time. Watching the kid try to hide a grimace again forced the witch-whitelighter to trap his bottom lip between his teeth to contain a snort of laughter.

"Th-that was a joke, right?" Ken asked a little weakly, gazing at Bridget earnestly.

The Hunter just gave another overly-exaggerated shrug and snagged a chunk of Nixa's biscotti. The blonde pushed the entire plate towards Bridget, and her friend took the biscotti and crammed the entirety of what was left into her mouth at once. She smiled at Ken, attempting to say something around the cookie but only spitting slightly-soggy crumbs everywhere.

"Hands up for voting 'Ew'?" Ben commented, raising his own hand above his head.

"I think that's the plan," Chris murmured quietly, finally allowing the laughter that had been building the pressure in his chest to escape again and Bridget finally swallowed the cookie.

"What about the weekend after that?" Ken asked hopefully, looking directly into her eyes.

Bridget opened her mouth, realising that she was rapidly being lied-out. She flicked a subtle, pleading glance at Chris for help. It was odd. She genuinely didn't want to hurt this kid's feelings. As much as she wanted to tell him to go and play in traffic, she didn't want to hurt his feelings. But lying was getting old. She wasn't in the mood for this, not really.

"Come on, Bridget," Chris said, standing up and taking her arm. "You know you've got to be home before that curfew the cops gave you. Remember what happened the last time you spent the night in jail?"

Bridget crinkled her forehead into a frown. "No…?" she asked, tilting her head to one side. "What happened?" She was genuinely interested to hear that story that Chris was going to dream up for her night in jail.

Chris patted her arm and pulled her to her feet so that they could shuffle around the table together. "Never mind. Perhaps you were being Jeremy at the time."

Ben also got to his feet, shuffling around the table as well so that he could get out of the same end as Bridget and Chris had. He reached into his pocket and withdrew a dollar bill, as did Chris and Bridget. Nixa delved into her bag and pulled one out. They threw them onto the empty biscotti plate and Nixa got to her feet, giving Ken a look that told him to move. He scrambled out of the booth to let her past, and she joined her friends.

"Didn't you pay?" Ken asked, frowning at the money.

Nixa laughed. "It's a tip, Ken. Whenever we come here, we always tip a dollar each. It's just what we do. I think it's half the reason that they put up with us, actually…"

"That, and the barista and the waiter want to get into your pants…" Bridget muttered, looking at the floor.

"You always eat my free biscotti," Nixa said, rolling her eyes heavily and tolerantly. "So, technically, if they know that I always give it to you, maybe they're indirectly trying to get into _your _pants?"

Bridget opened her mouth to argue, but then closed it again. "Dammit! I hate it when you use logical trains of thought on me!"

Nixa smirked. "Let's go then, shall we?"

"Just a second!" Ken said, throwing a one dollar coin on top of the four dollars already on the table. "You know, I might as well if I've been here too… I think I'll go with you."

"You left your coffee," Bridget said monotonously.

"So did you," Ken replied, stumping Bridget for words.

"Okay, yeah, I did. Fine. Let's just get out of here if we're going, okay?" She turned on her heel and pushed the door open, setting the bell jangling and stomped out into the street. The rest followed after her, stopping to toss quick 'goodbyes' over their shoulders in the general direction of the counter and opening the door, whisking them outside in a blast of cold air.

* * *

**The action starts in the next chapter, I promise. Demon fight. Thank you for all of your reviews.**

**_Twisted Flame_**


	3. Chapter 3

Out on the street, most of the commuters were gone now. There were still a few shoppers darting about, but their heads were bowed against the chilly wind coming off the Bay and they were also hurrying off the street as shops began closing around them. Ben zipped his jacket up and stuffed his hands deep into his pocket, darting ahead of the other four and walking backwards facing them.

Above his head, a streetlamp blinked to life, illuminating him orange. The entire line was stuttering on, right down the street, as if they were a line of dominoes and someone had nudged the first one. Another gust of wind blew, chilling Ben even through his jacket. He could feel goosebumps prickling him his arms and around his back.

Nixa pulled her hat down more over her head, wishing that, as she tasted her shampoo on her hair for the fourth time, that she had brought something with her to secure her hair back. She wrapped her arms around herself, making sure to keep her purse sandwiched between her arm and the arm of Chris next to her. She was wearing the wrong shoes to pursue a mugger.

Bridget kicked at an empty polystyrene takeout cup emblazoned with _Caffeine Cabana _moodily, wishing that it was the freshman that had fallen in step next to her. It just… ARGH. She kicked the cup especially hard and it got caught midair by a gust of wind and took off, swirling through the air to land with a hollow clatter on the hood of a parked car.

The light was really fading now and Ben was glad of the streetlamps, especially when it came to spying uneven sections of the sidewalk that attempted to trip him up. He spun around, deciding that it was less dangerous to walk forwards. Sheets of newspaper rustled as they got caught in the wind and were blasted along the sidewalk. Ben kicked a piece off that had wrapped itself around his leg. A spot of rain burst on his shoulder and he groaned, speeding up. Wet, cold, night rain was not fun to get caught in.

"Oh, rain. Great. Wonderful," Nixa muttered bitterly, wrapping her arms even tighter around herself. "Well, my day is now complete."

Suddenly, a scream pierced the night. Ben whirled on his heel, looking intently at his three friends, who had stopped dead. Ken had kept walking without noticing, and almost ploughed right into Ben. He started to ask for an explanation, but Ben shushed him, waving an impatient hand. The scream sounded again.

"That way," Nixa said, pointing right. She and Bridget immediately took off at a run, Nixa's shoes biting into her feet and rubbing the skin off as she ran. Ben and Chris followed after them as they reached the end of the street, turned right and kept running before turning down the next street. They stopped at the top of it, catching their breaths. Bridget surveyed the street shrewdly with narrowed eyes as Nixa slipped off her shoes and looped her fingers through the back of them. The biting-cold concrete immediately seeped through her socks and into her soles. She felt another spot of rain fall onto her shoulder, and then another on her hat.

"The alley," Bridget said, immediately launching herself in the direction of the narrow opening between two buildings. Just as Nixa, Ben and Bridget were about to follow, Ken turned up behind them, panting.

"What's… what's… what's going on?" he puffed, his breath condensing into milky clouds around his head. "Why were you running?"

"It's important that you _stay here_, got it?" Chris ordered, looking pleadingly into Ken's eyes. "Stay here. Seriously. We'll be back in like five minutes." He turned around, walking backwards as Ben ran past him. "It's safer here. Trust me." He, too, turned and ran towards the alley.

In the middle of the alley there was a young woman, sprawled unmoving, half across the small steam grate set in the concrete. The demon had been thrown backwards into a dumpster by either Bridget or Nixa, both of whom at their fists balled tightly in a fighting stance. The light was even worse here. The alley was blind, so the only light was what filtered in through the narrow entrance.

The demon was in human form but, as it got up, it reverted to its demonic form and growled, baring fangs. It was dark blue with zig-zag streaks of white across its arms and torso, as well as one running horizontally across its eyes.

"It's always a dark alley," Ben commented tiredly. "I mean, there's never any _variety_, you know what I mean? It's always an alley at night." Rain spattered on his head, running down the back of his neck, and on various points on his sleeves and shoulders. "And it's often cold, miserable and wet," he added bitterly, shaking his head and turning up his collar.

The demon flicked a wrist and tossed bolts of lightning at Nixa and Bridget. Bridget took hers in the shoulder and it flung her backwards, tossing her, hard, to the concrete. Nixa dodged hers and it sizzled out on the wall, blasting bits of mortar everywhere and blackening the brick. The stench of burning flesh filled the alley.

"Oh, crap…" Ben groaned, grimacing at the lightning power. "Great. We pick an Elektraz Demon to find on the way home." He flicked his own wrist forming an ice ball and throwing it at the demon. It found its target and tossed the Elektraz Demon backwards into the dumpster again, ice hardening across its entire upper body.

Snarling, the demon arched its back in pain and tossed a lightning bolt at Chris. Instinctively, the witch-whitelighter froze it and then flung it back at the demon, blasting a smoking hole in its abdomen but shattering Ben's ice. Nixa got to her feet, dusting herself off, as the two witches walked forwards towards the demon.

"How are we going to kill this thing?" Ben muttered out of the corner of his mouth.

"I was kind of banking on Bridget's mini-arsenal rather than us having to rhyme," Chris hissed back. "Are you in a couplet kind of mood?"

"Not exactly… Was kind of hoping that you were…"

Chris threw out his hands and froze the demon, twisting his mouth in thought. He turned around and saw Bridget sitting up, working her shoulder despite the wound. She touched it gingerly with two fingers and hissed in pain, wiping the gore that they came back stained with on her jeans.

"G-guys?" Immediately, four pairs of eyes swivelled to see Ken standing at the mouth of the alleyway, slowly and cautiously making his way down it. "What's happening? What's going on? I heard yells…"

"I told you to stay where you were!" Chris yelled. "I didn't tell you that for _my _health. Go! Scr—"

"CHRIS!" Nixa shrieked, as the demon tore itself out of its freeze.

Both Ben and Chris had only time to half-turn before the demon backhanded Chris into a stack of shipping pallets, sending the witch-whitelighter crashing through the wood. It tossed a lightning bolt at Ben, which the witch instinctively shot a blast of Cryokinesis at. The force of the two powers annihilating one another tossed Ben to the concrete near the unconscious woman on the steam grate. Next, the demon turned its focus to the end of the alley, throwing an electrical charge at the end of the alley and Ken.

Bridget leapt to her feet as the freshman just stood there in shock and tackled him to the ground so that the power continued out of the alley and hit a streetlamp, which it overloaded and fused, blowing out the glass onto the street below and setting off a car alarm. It immediately went all-but-black in the alley, with the loss of the little light that they had had.

"What _is _that thing? What's going on?" Ken hissed fearfully, his eyes wide and staring up at Bridget. "What did it just do?"

"Tried to kill you," Bridget said gruffly, rolling off Ken and springing easily to her feet. "You really should have listened to Chris, kid."

"S-so you… you _saved _me?"

Bridget, who had been walking back towards the fight, stopped in her tracks and turned, her mouth hanging open, speechless. She raised a hand, finger extended, to start giving Ken a lecture but couldn't find the words. This was unbelievable. The kid had nearly died and he was _still _finding any and every iota of information to fuel his crush on her. There had to be something seriously wrong with him. "Just stay there," she snapped, side-stepping a blast than came from behind without having seen it coming. "Try doing as you're told, got it?"

Chris had orbed back into action and Ben was getting up, half of his face chequered with what would be bruises later from hitting the steam grate. Nixa pulled an athame from her purse and then tossed the bag down onto the ground behind her. Bridget opened her coat and pulled out a miniature axe that had its own special straps sewn into the lining.

"Mini-arsenal," Chris said with a grin. "What did I tell you?"

Ben, however, faked disappointed. "What's wrong, Bridget? No semi-automatic?"

Bridget sniffed, putting her nose in the air. "That," she vamped haughtily, "would be in my _other _coat."

"As long as you've not lost it."

The demon suddenly shimmered out and the four of them stopped their advancement. Bridget threw her hands up into the air in annoyance. She had got her axe out for nothing? Ugh. She hated demons that were teases. You thought that you were going to get to nail them and then nada. Nothing. Squat. She kicked out at the dumpster.

"Guys…?"

It was Ken again and the foursome turned, seeing the demon bent over the body of the young woman again. Ben formed icicles at the tips of his fingers and flung out his hand, shooting each of the deadly-pointy weapons at the demon. Three hit it but one went wide and shattered on the brick wall. Roaring in pain, the demon threw a lightning bolt at him. Bridget dived sideways, grabbing Ben and forcing them both to the floor. They rolled awkwardly and Bridget ended up underneath when they came to rest.

Immediately, flashes of her dreams came back to the Hunter and her body temperature shot up. She was glad of the dark because she knew that she'd just gone bright red. "Hey, gimme some room!" she chided angrily, shoving Ben sideways and off her He landed in a puddle. "Jeez, suffocate a girl why don't y—"

The demon had thrown another lightning bolt at the exact moment that she had thrown Ben off her. The stream of electricity smashed into the concrete millimetres from Ben's stomach but the witch, damp from having been thrown onto the steam grate, and into the puddle, managed to conduct the entire charge and was blown from the floor clean to the end of the alley, where he smashed into the dumpster stationed there.

"BEN!" Bridget yelled, scrambling over to the witch on all fours. The rain began in earnest, turning the cracked, ridged concrete slightly slippery and she slid as she made her way over to him. She turned him over and he rolled, his head and limbs lolling limply into her lap. "Ben! You bastard…" she muttered as she scrambled at his neck for a pulse. "If you're dead I am never going to forgive you…" She swept her hair out of the way to bend down next to his mouth. She heard breathing and immediately relaxed, picking up his hand and pressing down on his wrist to take his pulse. It was beating erratically, fast and uneven, but it was there. She lowered his hand to the ground.

This was getting ridiculous. Seriously. She could barely do daily life with Ben, let alone fight demons with him. If that demon had actually hit Ben, then the witch would be dead now rather than just unconscious, and it would have been all her fault. Frowning helplessly she turned, then set her mouth into a thin line.

Darting to the shipping pallets, the Hunter grabbed a large stake of wood. She tested the balance in her hands, then nodded to Chris. The witch-whitelighter flicked a wrist, sending the demon staggering backwards. Bridget thrust forward, driving her weapon through its back and out through its chest, leaping backwards as it burst into flames.

"There," she said triumphantly, dusting off her hands and dropping the wood to the floor. "And that's that."

"Who the hell are you?" Ken demanded breathlessly, his eyes wide. "And who the hell was that? I don't get it — what's going on?"

Chris, Nixa and Bridget all exchanged hesitant looks. Nixa looked conflicted, gnawing on her lip. Bridget only shrugged, returning to Ben and trying to gently wake him up. Chris groaned, running a hand over his face and starting to pace. He had always known that this would have been left to him.

"Ken… We're… witches," he said finally, pausing to gauge the freshman's reaction. He got only a slow and confused nod, and ploughed on. "We save good people. Like the woman there." He pointed down to the unconscious victim on the steam grate. "There are always bad people threatening the innocent. He was a demon. They hunt out people, for whatever reason; to kill them, to eat them… I don't know. It doesn't matter. The important thing is to stop them. Which is what we do.

"But we can't do it if everyone knows. We can't go about doing this if everybody knows about us, because it would just be plain impossible. You get that, right? We have our secrets for a reason. We can't help people if you tell anyone what you just saw. Will you keep the secret?"

"You killed someone… You murdered someone…"

"No," Nixa said strongly. "No, we didn't. We _saved _someone. By killing, yes, but it was killing evil, so… it's justifiable. We would never, ever hurt good people. It just isn't something that we'd do. That's not what we're for."

"What if I don't want to keep it? I mean… you're all weird. I could sell it on the Internet and make money. I could—"

"If you try that then you'll disappear," Bridget threatened, rising to her feet. "Seriously, Ken, you do not know who you're messing with here. Nixa and Chris may take the civilised and polite route but that isn't the same for me. If you start trying to sell us out for your own pathetic gain I will do something that I'll regret. Do you get that? Capiche?"

"God, it's that word again…"

"Ben!" Bridget shouted, turning back towards the witch again. "You're okay! How do you feel?"

"Like a family bucket of the Colonel's Secret Recipe," Ben muttered irritably, using the Dumpster to steady himself as he sat up. "Electrocution? Ow. Just in case you were wondering."

"Does this kind of thing happen every day?" Ken asked, his eyes like saucers. "You go through this every day? Is that why you always have bruises, Bridget?"

"Always… Why do you _notice _that?" Bridget said exasperatedly. "Not even my teachers notice, and they're meant to be looking out for, you know, signs of abuse in order to be doing their _jobs _properly. Just… Ack!" She dragged a hand backwards threw her hair, then stuck both of them on her hips. "You're _creepy._ You know that?" She wrinkled her nose and scraped her wet hair back from her face, the water it was holding enough to keep it swept back from her forehead.

"What?" Ken's eyes flicked back and forth, searching her face for any sign that she was joking. "W-why? Why do you say that?"

"So you think your behaviour is completely normal?" Bridget asked, snorting. "You know, you could at least recognise that you're weird. I mean, I've managed it. It's not that hard, not really."

"I can be weird," Ken said in a small voice, getting slowly and slowly more offended. He frowned at Bridget, twisting his mouth in thought. "Do you want me to be more weird?"

Bridget sighed. "Ken… Look. Okay, this… you're cute. Okay? But you need to find someone your own age. Hell, find someone five times your age. Just… find someone that isn't me, okay? Please? I don't feel the same way about you as you apparently do about me, got it?"

"We're not safe people to have as friends, Ken," Nixa said, stepping forward and shaking her head sadly. "And that is why you never see us mixing much. Whoever we make even the smallest relationship with could… well, get them run through by a lightning bolt. As you've seen." She skirted a puddle and, looking up at the sky, wrinkled her nose and turned up her collar, shivering slightly as the adrenaline left her and the coldness of the night began to set in. Still, rain trickled down her neck and she was acutely aware of it running down her back, the icy fingers of the bead tracing her vertebrae and making her shiver.

"But… what about when you go home?" Ken pressed. "I mean, surely that puts all of your family in danger? You have a relationship with them, right? Much stronger than a friendship, so why can't we still be friends?" He hadn't seemed to notice the rain. There was hair plastered to his forehead and drops of water kept assaulting his eyelashes, but he either didn't realise or care.

Chris laughed. "Heh! Sorry. But… heh. I live with four of the most powerful beings in the world. If anything, they're putting _me _in danger. I don't have to worry about demons attacking them. Well, okay, I do, but they always end up as a scorch mark, so…"

"So you're telling me that you can't have any friends? Ever?" Nixa looked pained and began picking her nails, slipping back into her shoes and then staring at them resentfully but saying nothing. Bridget had stopped looking at Ken and had begun kicking at the broken crates, looking for her fallen axe. Chris only gave a one-shouldered that's-the-way-it-is shrug and the best smile be could offer Ken in the situation.

"That's why we have each other," Ben said lightly, a smile quirking the side of his mouth upwards. "You know, Bridget's a pain in my ass—" The Hunter flipped him off without looking at him. "—Chris is a neurotic freak and Nixa… Nixa is tapping her foot and glaring at me, so the official line is that we _love _Nixa." He dropped his voice to a stage whisper. "But really she takes out all of her anger through her AmEx and can't have her life of shopping and cheering because of what we do."

"If you hadn't just been electrocuted…" Nixa threatened, turning smartly on her heel and picking up her purse from the floor and sliding her athame back into it.

"So why don't you just not do it?" Ken asked, still apparently struggling to grasp the concept of helping strangers.

"What do you think would have happened to this woman if we hadn't done something?" Chris asked, gesturing to her. As he did so, she moaned and rolled over.

"The… thing would have killed her," Ken answered, his words getting heavier the closer to the end of his sentence they came. "If it weren't for you, she'd be dead. Right?" He paused, his eyes widening again. "So you're, like, super heroes or something? Comic books?"

"Well, once you've seen Bridget in the mornings you'll realise that it's less of the super," Ben informed him, shrugging.

"And, once you get to know Ben, you'll find it's less of a hero and more of a zero," Bridget shot at Ken right after Ben was done, finally finding her axe in the pile of crates and smiling contentedly, sliding it back inside her coat and then buttoning it against the rain.

"Does anyone know where we are?" Ben asked, retrieving his cell phone from his pocket and flipping it open, squinting at the display and then shielding it from the rain with his hand. He looked up at his friends expectantly.

"Maston Street," Ken chimed in with immediately. "I read the sign while I was waiting for you."

"Thanks," Ben said, dialling. "Hey, operator? I'd like to report a mugging. Yes. She's unconscious. I was just on my way home and I heard screaming. She's alive, definitely. Okay. We're in an alley off Maston Street. Get here as quickly as you can. My name?" He hung up and, wincing, he climbed to his feet, slipping his cell phone back into his jeans.

Nixa crouched down next to the woman and swiftly put her in the recovery position. She looked up at the near pitch-darkness around her, frowning. "Can we do something about the streetlamp, guys? Otherwise, they might miss her."

"Rhyming?" Ben groaned, pulling a face. "Why us?" He paused, shaking his head. "Yes, I just heard how stupid that was. Okay, so, what about… no. I really have nothing."

"_Broken streetlight_

_Hear my plight… _That's my input," Chris said, throwing up his hands. "Take it away, Ben."

Ben glared at him and frowned, gnawing on his bottom lip. _"Broken streetlight_

_Hear my plight,_

_I call upon you to… reignite_

_Really, really bright. Ly." _The witch winced. "Just kill me. Seriously, batter me to death with a rhyming dictionary."

White lights formed in the air above Ben and Chris, coalescing into one orb that was so bright that none of them on the ground could bear to look at it. They all screwed up their eyes, shading their faces as it glided towards the streetlamp and nestled in the empty hood where the bulb and glass had been before it had blown up. It got even brighter if possible, becoming almost like a floodlight, spotlighting the entire alley with almost clinical light.

"Something tells me that one 'really' would have sufficed, Ben," Nixa murmured, shivering again. "Come on. Please let's get home and out of the rain… I will have an afro when I take this hat off."

"You guys fixed the streetlight?" Ken asked, glancing up at it momentarily before being forced to look away. His mouth was wide open in awe. "Oh my God! That's so cool! How? With that rhyming? It was a spell, wasn't it? You wrote a spell. That's amazing…"

Bridget cocked her head. "Sirens." The wail of sirens had started to get louder and louder in the background, and Bridget immediately began leading the group away from the alley, wanting to be out of the streetlamp's enormous arc as quickly as possible. Bowing her head, she felt herself relax as she melded with the darkness.

"If you can fix a streetlight, surely there's _loads _of other things. I mean, anything that rhymes, right? Anything that rhymes and _poof! _There it is." He paused, shaking his head. "Oh, man. That is so not fair. How come you get to be witches?"

"You're born a witch. Well, you know, there are witch practitioners and stuff and whilst they have some power they don't have… powers," Ben explained rather vaguely, frowning and rubbing at his chest.

"What's wrong?" Nixa asked, watching her friend grimace.

Ben shook his head and carried on walking. "It's nothing. My heart is just… acting up. Probably because I got fried. It's nothing, it's just being a bit… random, that's all. Fine. I'm fine, seriously."

"You're coming home to get that fixed," Chris told him, signalling the end of the matter. "Seriously, otherwise you're going to end up having a heart attack."

"This was what I meant about neurosis…" Ben said quietly, rolling his eyes heavily. Chris shoved him and he staggered sideways at the unexpected blow, almost crashing headlong into the side of a building.

"If my neurosis keeps you alive to snark another day, then I'm not going to complain about it," the witch-whitelighter shot back with a shrug as Ben rejoined the group. The wind blew, spattering the rain directly into their faces. Nixa had to hold her hat on.

"So what if you wanted… a car," Ken said, his eyes still alight. "You'd just say, I don't know… some rhyme. Whatever. And a car would land on your driveway?"

"No," Chris stressed earnestly, shaking his head. "No. Well… Okay, technically yes, but no. No way. No way, no how. Under no circumstances would that happen."

The freshman stopped walking, stunned by Chris's vehement denial. "Why not?"

"Personal gain," Ben chipped in shortly, one hand still inside his coat and working his chest absently. "Our powers are simply for killing the bad guys and not getting us what we want. No matter how easy it would be or how tempting it is to rhyme and drop a Porsche in the garage, it can't happen. Ever. And, if you did do it, then the cosmos would probably find a way to screw you over. You'd get carjacked for it, or something. I don't know. But it wouldn't go right."

"So you can't do _anything _good?"

"Well, there's _saving lives_," Ben replied sarcastically. "Is that not good enough for you?"

"Well, sure, it's _good _but I mean you know… Fun stuff. Like your Porsche. You can't do that?"

"No, we _could_ do that Ken. Pretty damn easily," Chris snapped, getting tired of this conversation and the kid's persistent questioning. "If you worded the spell properly and everything then I could be sitting in my own yacht moored off my own private island. Well… That would probably require some help from my brother to get something that big but do you get what I'm saying?"

Ken shook his head, frowning at the paving stones. "Not really. You guys have this amazing power. You practically click your fingers and, abracadabra, you've fixed a streetlamp. Just like that. So how is a Porsche different?"

"Because the Porsche is for me," Ben said. "The Porsche is something completely selfish for _me. _The streetlamp was just so the paramedics would not drive right past the alley and leave the innocent there to die. Are you seeing the difference?"

"You saved the… woman person, so now don't you _deserve _a car?"

"No!" Chris finally exploded. "No, it doesn't work like that! We cannot use our powers to do stuff for ourselves, no matter how many selfless things that we've done. Got it? Jeez… Ken, where do you live?"

"Why?"

"I'm not walking in the rain anymore. We're going home," Chris said shortly, motioning to Bridget, who was still walking in front of the group. "I'll drop you off."

"I don't under—"

"Where?"

Ken gave an address of an apartment building near the _Bay Mirror _and Chris nodded, making sure that everyone was touching before orbing them all away.

* * *

**My thanks goes out to annonymous reviewers cd and rmbry. Thank you for your kind reviews -- I'd say more but I better not under fear of death.**

**Okay. I actually mostly have Chapter Four written. How proud of that fact am I? It starts to get kind of creepy now. Thanks for sticking with me**

**_Twisted Flame._**


	4. Chapter 4

**Whoops. Forgot to tell you all that I don't own this, and am making no money from this, and that any resemblance any of the characters have to anyone, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. **

* * *

"I think this is a lot of fuss over nothing," Ben reiterated, though he winced as they appeared in the Manor's foyer.

Bridget rolled her eyes, having to move quickly as Ben stumbled. "When did you start thinking that? Was it the second or third time your legs collapsed underneath you? And do you have any idea how _heavy _you are?" she demanded, turning into the seating area to the left opposite the doorway to the living room and gently lowering him onto the seat.

"Not collapsing. They didn't collapse. They just don't stop twitching," Ben corrected her, leaning backwards and resting his head on the wall, closing his eyes. Bridget looked at him guiltily, knowing full well that she was the reason that he'd been zapped. Her and her stupid dreams. Well, she'd fixed it now. That session with Wyatt in the closet would have, hopefully, cured her of any dreams of Ben. If not, she was going to hurt Wyatt. How dare he not fix her problems, damn him?

But no. That wasn't an option. Wyatt didn't need killing because her problems were long gone. No more creepy Ben dreams for her. _Please _no more creepy Ben dreams for her.

"None of you stops twitching," Nixa reminded him, leaning against the doorframe. "Not only did it hit you, it hit you right in the centre of your body, and you were wet when it did. This could seriously have screwed up your heart. No, correction, it probably _has _screwed up your heart. And it's kind of a downer to have you drop dead on us."

Bridget looked up. "What? Says who?"

"What have you kids done this time?" Paige enquired wryly, appearing at the entrance of the alcove with Chris in tow. "I'm sure last time I did this for you, I told you all to stay out of trouble? Or was that just my imagination?"

"Elektraz demon," Ben explained shortly. "Lightning bolts are not my friend."

"Oooh, niiiiiiice," Paige commented, moving into the alcove. "Did you get him?" she asked, holding out two glowing hands over Ben.

"Yup. Most definitely," Ben assured her, shaking out his shoulders as she finished healing him and stretching out his neck, grimacing as it crunched. The tightness in his chest was gone now, and his heart had returned to its faithful, steady rhythm rather than sometimes skipping a beat and then pumping extra fast to make up for it. He exhaled in relief, relaxing as that particularly huge weight was lifted from his mind.

"Silly question, huh? Anyone else need looking over or was it just Ben playing chicken with a million volts?"

"Bridget needs her shoulder fixing," Chris put in, knowing full well that the Hunter wouldn't ask for healing unless she was on the brink of death.

"Alrighty…" the Charmed One turned, passing a hand over Bridget's shoulder until the wound sealed itself. She clapped her hands together. "Now, children, is there anything else I can do for you? Because, if not, I am going back to the evening I had planned with my husband."

Chris pulled a face. "You know, you guys _do _have a room. There really isn't any need to be all over each other on the couch in the sunroom…"

Paige rolled her eyes heavily. "Just because we're older than you doesn't mean we have to hide that we still love each other, you know. Actually, wait. I'm the adult here. So that means I get to tell the lot of you to scram. Go home before I get more angry calls from your parents that I really wish I'd let Piper field…"

Nixa laughed. "We're on our way," she assured Paige, pulling Ben up and out of his seat. "We'll see you tomorrow, Chris, okay?"

The witch-whitelighter raised a hand in a goodbye gesture and then walked them to the door, closing it behind them when they were down from the front steps and in the street. He turned around, leaning against it, and coming face-to-face with Paige. "You know, you guys are perfectly entitled to go back to trying to swap tongues. After tonight, I am so wiped. I'm going to bed. Good night."

"Night, honey," Paige returned affectionately, watching him go.

_**Quiet Please, I'm Stalking**_

Ken checked the clock in the bottom right of his screen and sighed. It was past three-thirty. In about an hour, it would start to get light, and he hadn't slept yet at all. But he was drawn on in his search because of the desperate need for it not to be fruitless and for everything that he would gain once he found what he was looking for. If he found what he was looking for. He looked guiltily at his closed bedroom door, knowing full well that if his parents awoke and crossed to the bathroom, he'd be in a lot of trouble.

But what he was finding was worrying, to say the least. Too worrying. Google was far too powerful a tool for what he was doing, really, but he didn't really know of any other ways, so this was what was happening. With the keywords 'Witches', 'Demons' and 'Powers', he'd achieved page after page of results on how witches were evil renowned for having sex with Satan and using their powers for evil. Not that he thought that either Ben or Chris were having sex with the Devil — the thought nonplussed him — and it certainly seemed that they had used their powers for good, so these websites filled with ancient Catholic… well, propaganda, really was the only way that he could describe it, especially as it seemed that it wasn't necessarily correct seemed completely out of context and not what he was looking for at all.

When he took the word 'evil' out of the equation, things got slightly more interesting. But not useful. There were websites all about Wiccan lore, and a LOT of references to ancient mythology. But, mostly, there were tacky, gimmicky websites with flashing banners promising him love potions that would definitely work, and spells that would guarantee him 'A's in tests. They weren't what he wanted — he doubted sincerely that they'd work, anyway. Well, they might work, providing that he had some of the powers that Ben and Chris had. Then anything that rhymed could potentially get him anything that he wanted. Or, at least, that was the way that they'd put it. Something about, if you used the right words, you could get anything.

But first, he had to _get _the power to do that. And the Internet really wasn't being that useful. Which had to be a first, to be honest. But he needed powers, because then they'd let him into their group, and then he'd have a chance with Bridget. But without any magic, it was too dangerous for him. Which he accepted, grudgingly. He wanted to date Bridget but if he got killed that would be a problem.

He'd have to go to a library. Books were older than the Internet and probably contained more useful information. Then he could get powers, and Bridget would date him. It was as simple as that: all of the time he remained a zero, she wouldn't look at him twice. He closed his browser window and shut down the computer. Later in the week, he'd go to the Public Library and see what he could find. In the meantime, he needed to sleep. He crawled under the comforter and was asleep within minutes.

_**Quiet Please, I'm Stalking**_

"What did you want to talk about?" Ben asked, closing Bridget's bedroom door behind him and leaning against it, watching as she crossed the room and sat on her bed.

Bridget shrugged. "Just… stuff, you know? Sit down."

Ben pulled the chair out from the desk and sat on it, tucking his legs under him. "Sitting," he stated, pivoting the chair first left and then right, and then spinning all of the way around. When the chair came to rest again and he was facing Bridget he was about to say something but words failed him, and he just stared at her.

Suddenly finding it very hard to breathe she stared back, rubbing her neck and then gently letting her fingers trail down to toy with the top of her top. The air seemed to suddenly become supercharged with tension, and before she knew what she was doing her muscles had coiled and she had leapt off the bed and covered the room in two bounds.

She grinned, latching onto the arms of the chair and rolling it towards her. Ben leant forward, coming close enough for their noses to be millimetres from touching. They both paused, gazing into each other's eyes before Bridget filled the space between them, tilting her head and kissing Ben.

Ben immediately responded, slipping a hand under her top and running it up and down her back. Still kissing, she used one hand to wrench the witch to his feet, kicking the chair across the room so hard that it slammed into the wall and dented the plaster, and pushing him backwards onto the desk. He swept everything from the surface, sending it clattering to the floor and they finally broke apart, gasping, before she began clawing at the collar of his shirt, ripping the fabric from his shoulders and shrugging her way out of her jacket. He reached out and pulled her back on top of him, kissing her and reaching up her back again until he found her bra strap and—

Bridget sat bolt upright and immediately began scrambling to get out from underneath the covers. They felt suffocating and claustrophobic and just too hot. She'd left her window open and the cold, damp night hair hit her hard, almost shocking her enough to erase the memories of the dream. She clawed at the tops of her arms, running her hands down them as if trying to sweep the images from her body. She shuddered, realising that it wasn't helping — not that it usually did, it was just a reflex action by now — and began pacing the room back and forth, raking a hand through her already-mussed hair. Clean. She was never going to be clean again, was she?

This had to stop. This had to stop now. This was… She ran her hands over her face, rubbing at her eyes and stretching her skin before relaxing and collapsing into her chair. What was _wrong _with her? She was going to fix this. She had to — this was getting beyond ridiculous.

Why hadn't the stint with Wyatt fixed her? Stupid Nixa and her useless ideas. She'd actually have problems looking Wyatt in the eyes now and it didn't even do the job that it was supposed to do? And she'd said it once and she'd say it again — how _dare _he not fix her problems? Stupid, stupid, stupid Twice Blessed idiot. Now she had to fix her own problems.

She sighed, glancing over at her alarm clock. It was four in the morning. "Come on then, Bridget. Up and at them," she muttered, standing up and stretching. Coffee. She needed coffee. As quietly as she could, she slunk out of her bedroom door and down the stairs, giving her thanks to any and every deity that was listening — even those ones that lived in puddles — for caffeine.

_**Quiet Please, I'm Stalking**_

"Hi. Don't get out of the car. I have to talk to you." Bridget slammed the car door and settled down in the passenger seat and turning to face Ben.

Ben jumped as she got in the car, and she was lucky that she hadn't ended up a Popsicle. Had she been standing and waiting for him to arrive just so she could ambush him? He hadn't seen her at all when he'd pulled into the space, so she was also damn luck that she hadn't been run over. "What—"

Bridget reached over and snatched the keys from the ignition, holding them tightly in her fist. "Sorry. I have to talk to you. And it has to be now and it has to be fast."

"So you took my keys… why?"

"You might drive off," Bridget reasoned, tightening her grip on them.

"_You're in the car with me."_

Bridget looked down at the keys, blinked, and threw them onto the dash in annoyance. "Shut up. It seemed like a clever thing to do, okay? Leave me alone."

Ben rolled his eyes and scratched the back of his head, waiting for Bridget to get to her point, whenever and whatever that might be. She didn't say anything, choosing instead to pick at her jeans and avoid his gaze. He sighed and reached for the door handle. "Can we do this later? I really have to go."

Bridget reached out and snatched his hand from the handle, keeping hold of his wrist so he didn't try it again. "No. We really can't do this later. We need to do this now, before I have to spend another day with you or fight a demon with you."

"Whoa. Um… okay? Did I do something wrong? Because you're kind of scaring me. And… well, you're breaking every bone in my wrist."

Bridget immediately released Ben's wrist, holding her hands up in the air and then putting them back down in her lap. "Sorry. I always forget that you're the kitten variety of weak."

Ben's eyebrows flicked up tiredly. "You're really not doing all that much for making me want to sit here and listen to you, you get that, right?"

Bridget clapped her hands together, suddenly becoming more business-like. "Okay. I know," she agreed, nodding her head. She was going to get this over with if it killed both of them. "You're right. I'm sorry." She took a deep breath in and let it out again slowly. "I… I've had… been having… Me and you…" You know, the truth hurt. Everyone said so. She'd just leave out the dreams — he didn't need to know. She'd find another way to fix it. "Okay. I'm really sorry for kicking you into the path of the lightning bolt last night. There! Phew! Glad that's off my conscience! See you later!" She put a hand on the door handle but Ben elbowed the lock on his side inwards, locking all of the doors in the car.

"I wasn't allowed to leave until you told me what you wanted to tell me. And I haven't. So now you're not allowed to leave until you tell me what you wanted to tell me."

"I hate you," Bridget said miserably, stamping her foot and glaring down into the foot well. She crossed her arms and slumped back into her seat. "Okay. You're going to laugh and such but here it is." She balled her hands into fists, already cringing. "For about a week, I've been having these really… really, really gross dreams." She sputtered quickly, pausing to check Ben's reaction. He remained mostly impassive and vaguely curious. "About you."

He blinked, looking semi-insulted. "So you're saying that I'm really, really gross? That's kinda harsh…"

"Well, actually, if you were paying attention I said 'really, really, really' but I'll let that one slide. No. You're not gross in them. The… content of the dreams is what's gross. You just happen to be in them helping me along with the gross factor."

"I'm… still really not getting where you're going with this," he confided in her, frowning. "But I get a feeling that you're not intending to take my mind to a happy place, somehow."

"Aww… That's because you're dense," Bridget said patronisingly, smiling sweetly. "Okay. In my dreams you and I… We're doing some things that we would never, EVER do in real life, and—"

The penny dropped and so did Ben's jaw. "Oh! Oh my… _God. _Okay, I'm with you now. And that is nasty. Keep your filthy subconscious away from me." He pulled a disgusted face, pausing and shaking his head. "_Why?"_

Bridget huffed. "_I _don't know. If I knew why, I'd stop it from happening. There was a time where I actually thought that you were the reason. Trust me; I was all ready to kill you at one point to make them go away."

"If you'd told me why you were killing me, I'd have saved you the trouble and jumped off a bridge." He shuddered, twisting his face in disgust again. "Okay… I think I'm over that. Well, you know, after twenty or so years on the couch, I'll be over that. Huh. Huh… Ew. No, I'm okay." He exhaled, the disgusted expression never leaving his face until his eyes began to glint familiarly. "Okay, I've gotta ask this. In these dreams… are they good? Am _I _good?"

Bridget laughed, slapping the top of his arm with the back of her hand and rolling her eyes. "You're such a dork, you know that, right? And, good… I think you'd get a seven."

"Just a seven?"

Bridget narrowed her eyes dangerously. "Point five. Don't push me, Olsen," she threatened lightly, sitting back in her seat and feeling as if a massive weight had been lifted off her. "Okay, that feels so much better. I'm glad we did this."

"What's it like in your dreams, though?"

"You want details? After telling me that thinking about it made you want to jump off a bridge?"

"Well, I figure that I'm gonna need to tell my psychologist about it, otherwise it's just me paying three hundred dollars to lie on a couch for the fifty-five minutes of my appointment left after I tell them 'My best friend's subconscious totally wants to do me'."

She hit him again, this time harder. "I do _not _want to do you!"

"Your subconscious does. And, let me tell you, it's got taste."

Bridget laughed again, shaking her head. "I already used dork, huh? Damn. I'll just settle for loser."

"A loser that you want to sex," Ben reminded her in a sing-song tone, grinning at her getting angrier and angrier.

"It'll be a loser with a concussion in a minute."

"A loser with concussion that—"

Bridget growled exasperatedly, grabbing his collar and yanking her towards him. He overbalanced and if it weren't for her holding him up, he would have fallen in her lap. Holding him in place, she started kissing in the way in which she'd become accustomed to seeing herself kiss him in her dreams, keeping a death grip on his shirt.

When they finally broke apart, she had to gently guide him back to his seat, as his body seemed to have ground to a halt. She just grinned at him, sniggering at his apparent lack of words. She didn't actually remember a time where Ben had been without much to say on… well, anything really and this was both a new and enjoyable experience.

"Um… Yeah…" He swallowed, blinking several times and running a hand through his hair. "Yeah… That, that wasn't me in your dreams. I don't know HOW to kiss like that. So I think you're safe."

"Promise?"

"Scouts honour," Ben assured her, unlocking the car doors. Bridget opened her door and slipped out, slamming it behind her. Ben grabbed his keys from the dash and got out as well, using the remote to lock the doors behind him. "Hey, wait a second. In the alley, when I landed on top of you, you kicked me off because of your dreams?"

Bridget pulled a sympathetic face. "Yeah… Sorry."

"Into the path of a lightning bolt?"

Bridget paused, biting her lower lip. "Did you know that phobophobia is the fear of everything? I mean, how do you live if you fear everything? Surely you'd just kill yourself because you're scared of living, but you couldn't kill yourself because you're scared of that, too."

Ben laughed unexpectedly. "What are we gonna do with you, Bridget Vance?"

"Buy me a pony? Called Princess?"

"I don't know about a pony, but I could see a man about a unicorn…"

"By which you mean you, right?" she enquired teasingly.

"Oh, sure. I love magical horsies! With their special golden horns!" He looked around and discovered that the group of people that had just walked past them had all turned around to stare at him. He smiled at them and waved, and they looked him up and down before walking on. "I've really got to stop doing that to myself, haven't I?"

"Took the words right out of my mouth, Benny Boy," she replied, rolling her eyes and slippingan arm through his and they walked off together.

From his crouching point behind a car two cars away from Ben's in the parking lot, Ken watched Ben and Bridget walk towards the school. They'd kissed. She was _dating _him? Bridget and Ben were together? He felt like his stomach had just dropped out. It was because Ben had powers. Ben had powers, and that meant that Bridget and Ben could be together because they were both magical. And he wasn't.

He stood up, stretching, shaking his foot to try and relieve the cramp in it. He needed to find a way to get some magic. More magic than Ben had. That way, Bridget was bound to like him more, and there was a possibility that she'd dump Ben and start going out with him. But it all boiled down to one thing — magic. The fact that he didn't have any and they did, and the fact that Bridget wouldn't look at him twice until he had some kind of power.

There was not going to be a later this week. He was going to go and get the stuff that he needed after school and do whatever it would take to make Bridget like him.

* * *

**Wow. I just realised... I don't own Wyatt or Chris or Paige but the rest of them? They're MINE!**

**That was for all of you who were yet to realise that I'm a loser.**

**Anonymous Reviewers Natalie and Embry -- Thank you for reviewing. I tried to find you both through search so I could thank you much more... long? (--) but I couldn't so I'll squeeze you in as a footnote and hope not to incur the wrath of TPTB. Thanks! The rest of you: expect your replies shortly.**

**THANK YOU!**

**_Twisted Flame._**


	5. Chapter 5

Ken frowned, shrugging his backpack higher onto his shoulders. He turned and glared petulantly at the library's front doors, spinning away from its silver front and stomping off down the sidewalk. Libraries were supposed to be friendly places, dammit. Hell, he'd seen like nine tramps in there just wanting to be inside with the air-conditioning running, and they hadn't had the wrath of a librarian come down on them. He mumbled an apology to some guy that he'd practically run headfirst into and scooted around him, watching for the briefcase held at the guy's side.

She probably hadn't been the best person to ask. I mean, he'd spent the entire damn night looking up about how much people of certain religions disliked witches, and she'd been wearing a crucifix around her neck. Still, he'd needed help. The library had a lot of books on witches. There were reams of information about witch trials — the Salem ones in particular — but that was nowhere near what he wanted. There were more books on Wicca, but they were mostly all in garish hot pink with various-coloured bubble-lettered headings, promising to get him his 'cute crush' or finding ways of 'getting him to notice you'. No good there. Even the serious books had some kind of gimmick inside them. There were multiple serious books on Wicca, but they were so… whilst he didn't doubt that they were all genuine, they weren't what he wanted. They wouldn't get him powers; they were just about finding ways to help the Earth's power achieve things that you would like in your life. And he needed a lot more than the Earth's power — he needed ones of his own.

He kicked out at a crumpled soda can angrily, sending it skittering off the kerb and into the middle of the street, whereupon a city bus ran over it, squashing it flat. When he'd asked the librarian — damn politely, he might add — if she had had any serious books on the occult she'd first pointed him in the direction of the kids' section and Harry Potter. Harry freaking Potter. Yeah. Really useful. Upon explaining that he meant an actual spell book, she had just laughed at him. That was where he should have stopped. She didn't have anything, but he'd continued on desperately, telling her about witches and demons in the vague hope that she'd reach up and pull down an ancient tome filled with just what he'd wanted.

It was then that he'd spotted the crucifix, and it was then that she coolly asked what his interest in 'that wicked mojo' was. Forced to stutter a lame explanation to her about something to do with a school project that didn't even make sense to him, she told him firmly that witches hadn't existed for hundreds of years and if they did then they were too scared to surface because they were heretics and should be burned at the stake and that, if he didn't mind, as they closed at six this evening, could he please not get anymore books from the shelves as she and the other librarians wanted to get home at a good time, just like everyone else.

And so he had put the books back on the shelves — most upside down and none in the right order, partly because he was angry and not paying attention and partly because he felt a deep-rooted desire to annoy — and grabbed his backpack and headed out into the street. _Public _Library. Library for the public. And he was the public, and he wanted to know something, and they'd all but ejected him, and forty minutes before closing time, too.

He kicked at a Styrofoam coffee cup this time and remembered Bridget and that night after the Caffeine Cabana. How good she looked when she was fighting, and then how amazing it was that she had come flying from _nowhere _and tackled him to the ground to save his life. Surely that meant something? That she'd jumped at him to save his life? Didn't that show that she cared? He kicked out at the cup again and it clattered into the small entryway of a shop. He glanced at the sign. Charms and Herbal Occult BookstoreHuh. A magical Barnes and NobleWell, it was worth a shot — he was desperate at the moment.

He took a deep breath and pushed at the door. A bell above him jangled as it opened, and then again as the door closed. The shop was narrow, narrower than it appeared from the outside. The walls either side of him were lined with bookcases overflowing with books and his eyes glinted and his heart leapt. These were the kind of things he was looking for. Leather-bound, proper parchment pages, looking kinda raggedy… These were magical books alright.

He carried onwards down the corridor of books. The lighting was so dim that he could barely see his feet. It was almost as if there was something in the air, something heavy. An atmosphere. The freshman slipped around one of those ladders on wheels and railings that were used on bookcases of this height, and suddenly the store opened up suddenly into a relatively large space that shocked Ken after the corridor of books.

Dotted around the room were six circular tables, covered in a different coloured cloths. They had a million curious-looking objects stacked on them. Glass orbs, pyramids of thick, coloured candles, yet more books, statues, small burners, empty glass vials and… skulls. Actual skulls. Animal, human… some weird ones that were neither — a gruesome hybrid. He shuddered. They were _real._ Actual real bare bones.

In a circular glass case on the round shelves within it various knives stood, points down, into wooden blocks that had been carved into holders. The hilts were either bejewelled or incredibly plain, and the blades varied in colour, size and shape. Next to the circular case was a rectangular glass case one with swords lying in them, snug on purple velvet. Right next to the glass case, making the top of the case an extension of the counter, a wooden counter ran all of the way to the back of the shop. There was a cash register on it and a bell, and more books.

Behind the counter were more shelves, this time covered entirely in glass jars of the same size, earthenware pots of varying shapes and one was entirely devoted to bundles of herbs tied up in bunches and lashed to nails protruding from the wood. He looked around nervously, taking one last look at the skulls before ringing the bell with his palm. Nothing happened so he rang it again.

"I'm coming! I'm coming!" A small cubicle had been created at the very end of the counter by building more shelves on top of the counter that reached to the ceiling and were covered in various trinkets and by fixing a curtain across inside the counter. From that curtain something suddenly burst, making an almighty roaring sound and Ken jumped and staggered backwards into a table, knocking a pyramid of candles over.

A man had obviously pushed off from the wall on a wheeled office chair and that had accounted for his sudden appearance, and the roar had been the wheels on the boarded floor. Still, Ken's heart was pounding in his mouth as he bent to pick up the fallen candles. It was this whole place. It made him so uneasy. That, and thanks to Ben and Bridget and Chris and Nixa he now knew all about demons, and kept expecting them to pop up from every corner and try to kill him.

"Leave those. You wouldn't believe how many people do that every day. I tried getting my assistant to stick them together somehow, but she never does. How can I help you, anyway?"

Ken put the armful of dark blue candles onto the table and bobbed his head in greeting. "Hey. Um… hey. I'm n-not really sure how you can help me, to be honest. I was just… wondering if you had any books on witchcraft?"

The man shrugged and got out of his chair, opening a flap in the counter and slipping out. He was quite overweight and it looked tight. He crossed to the side of the store opposite the counter and waved a hand at a section. Ken looked and whilst it lacked the bright gimmicky sell-as-many-copies-to-lonely-teenaged-girls-as-possible titles that he'd seen in the library, he noticed a couple of the more serious books that he _had _seen in the library and sighed. Same kind of thing, really.

"Sighing? Ahhh…" The man smiled knowingly, nodding his head. "I see. You're actually talking about serious, proper magic. Well, you're young, kid, but everyone seems to be getting younger these days. Or me older, and I just plain don't want to think about that, so the fault must rest with your generation as far as I'm concerned… Okay. Books on witchcraft. Specifics?"

Ken hesitated again. "I… I don't really know, to be honest. I-I was really hoping that you'd be able to tell me, to b-be honest."

"Okay. Tell me what you need and I'll do my best to get it for you. But I close in half an hour, understand?"

Ken took a deep breath. "I d-don't mean books _about _witchcraft. I mean, well, books with witchcraft in them. I was hoping that there was some kind of spell or a… _ritual, _maybe, if that's the right term to… get power."

"Well, there are many rituals to draw power through you. You are talking about the Earth's power, right?"

Ken shook his head again, suppressing another frustrated sigh. He had actually read the books in the library, and he knew that Wiccans or witch practitioners believed that they had a way of tapping into the power of the Earth and drawing it through them in order to accomplish various goals, whatever they may be. But, firstly, all of the goals he'd read about seemed kind of lame (cleansing a place, invoking household gods and such — not something he wanted to do) and so trivial compared to the powers of Chris and Ben. He'd said it before — some of the more serious books he was sure that they would probably work, but they were such little spells it just didn't seem even worth it. What he wanted was a spell that would give him powers.

"I mean actual p-power. Like, you know… the ability to turn things to ice, f-for example?"

The shopkeeper looked grave and pursed his lips. "You're not really understanding the basics of magic. Getting power like that is not the way that Wicca works. No one has powers like that, anyway. That's not how you use it at all and I'm not sure I'm inclined to put anything on magic in your hands at the moment until you know what you're dealing with."

"People do have powers like that!" Ken countered, speaking too quickly for his brain to shut him up. His eyes widened and he put a hand to his mouth, but it was already too late. Ben and Chris were going to _hate _him…

"Ahh…" the shopkeeper said again knowingly, nodding slowly. "So you do know something of the world of magic, huh?"

Ken opened and closed his mouth, not knowing what to say. All he could think about what how much trouble he'd be in if Bridget ever found out that he'd blown the gang's secret. Screw Ben and Chris hating him, Bridget would _loathe _him. She'd never speak to him again… "W-w-well, uh, what I _meant _was that, uh, i-it's possible to—"

"There are some real witches with real powers, yes. I'll never forget the day I saw telekinesis demonstrated to me here in this very store. But then I promised not to tell anyone. I assume that you probably did the same?"

Ken looked to the wooden floor. "It just k-kind of came out," he mumbled to his shoes, suddenly feeling more ashamed that he felt that he should.

The shopkeeper looked at him and then turned on his heel. "All of the books you saw as you came in are on magic," he said. "They're not the kind of stuff that we sell over there to any old person with a vague interest in Wicca. But these require power too, you know. It's possible for an ordinary practitioner to use them but it requires so much training and preparation and they don't always work, do you understand?"

"Are there any books to give me powers?"

"I told you, Wicca doesn't work like—"

"I have a hundred and forty bucks." He did. Between his birthday, visiting various elderly relatives and some light yard work on his street, he'd saved the money up. He was going to spend it on video games or something, but this was a lot more important than any stupid game.

The shopkeeper paused and looked at his watch. "I think I'll close early." He disappeared to the end of the corridor of books and spun the sign to 'Closed', turning the lock. The hairs stood up on Ken's arms momentarily, and the feeling of a heavy atmosphere was back. The man turned around and walked back behind the counter.

"You've got something?"

A shadow seemed to pass across the shopkeeper's face. "Yes. You do understand that, if anyone asks, you didn't get this here. I mean anyone _magical_. I don't want the likes of actual witches finding out that I'm dealing in black arts books, especially not that I'm selling them to teenagers. They might not take kindly." He ducked under the counter and Ken heard the spinning of a combination lock on a safe and leant against one of the round tables, waiting.

"Is there the spell I need in there?"

"It's not so much of a spell as a ritual," the man said, fishing the book from the safe and putting it on the counter, sliding it across to Ken. "You mix ingredients; there are a couple of chants… I'm sure you'll figure it out."

Ken walked towards the book and then stopped, just looking at it. The black leather cover was cracked and peeling away from the actual book in some places. It was fastened closed by a tarnished metal clasp and was a lot thinner than he'd expected it to me. There were some faint gold glimmers on the front — all that remained of the gilded-letter title. The book didn't look… _right. _He couldn't explain it, but there was just something so wrong with it. The shopkeeper pushed it further towards the edge of the counter and Ken stepped forward, taking a deep breath and licking his lips before slamming his hands down suddenly on the cover. When no huge thunderclap sounded he calmed down slightly, sliding his fingers around the edge to work the clasp.

"Here." The shopkeeper opened it deftly, even opening the book to the page that Ken would need.

The freshman looked down at the page, his forehead furrowing into a frown. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his money, throwing it down onto the counter. "Do you have all of this stuff?"

_**Quiet Please, I'm Stalking**_

"Jesus, blink once in a while when you use that thing, will you?" Bridget demanded irritably, watching as Ben stared at the screen whilst his fingers were all but a blur on the keys. "Otherwise, your eyeballs are going to fall out and I for one am not crawling around looking for them."

Ben did blink upon hearing her voice and turned away from the screen. "Huh?" he asked, looking quizzically at her. "Did you say something?"

"Oh, _that's _polite," Bridget snapped. "You weren't even listening to me."

"Hey, I'm doing you a favour here. I'm fixing your printer," Ben reminded her. "I'm not the one that broke it, remember?"

Bridget pulled a face, hating that she had to concede. "Oh, right," she huffed reluctantly. "So, what's the what? Are you done yet?"

Ben nodded. "Yeah, like half an hour ago. There was a problem with the spooling where—" He caught Bridget's blank look and stopped explaining. "Printer worky now. Bridget likey that, yes?"

She rolled her eyes, though she was very thankful that he had saved her from the long, technical explanation that she knew would normally have followed. "So what have you been doing for the past half an hour, then?"

Ben shrugged. "Well, when the printer was done I did consider joining the conversation but you and Nixa were watching MTV and talking about the varying degrees of skank every time any female came on, and Chris was looking around the room playing, 'My God I'm So Bored Let's See How Many Household Objects I Can Find Ways To Kill Myself With'. It didn't seem like a fun time."

"It's a good game," Chris confirmed, grinning at his friend. "Beats 'I Spy' every time."

"So what _have _you been doing?" Nixa asked, stabbing the remote with her thumb and turning the TV off. She turned around so that she was kneeling on the couch and leaning on the back, looking at him quizzically.

Ben winced. "Uh… nothing?" he tried, immediately knowing that it wouldn't wash with any of his friends. Under his friends' incredulous stares he caved, rolling his eyes and slumping down into his seat, toying with the spacebar. "Fine," he muttered. "Nothing _legal_. Happy?"

"New project that you're working on?" Chris asked, giving his friend a wry smile. "Which organisation are you working on breaking into this time?"

"Well, you know, first of all I was doing the easy stuff. Like going into the school and looking at Bridget's permanent record. It's like security, what security? It's not so much a firewall as a smouldering two-foot fence. Made of jello. It's kind of worrying, actually."

"Hey! Objection! You can't look at my permanent record!" Bridget shrieked, slapping his arm. "I didn't say you could do that!"

Ben grinned at her, swivelling back to the keyboard and hitting a couple of keys. He squinted at the screen. "Uh… It's here somewhere. Oh. Right. So, Bridget… I hear that you were an 'Outstanding pupil who was quiet, clever and caring' and who even drew her teacher a picture of a unicorn to stick on her fridge. So cute! Tell me — when did you go wrong?"

Bridget narrowed her eyes at him. "Around the time I met you," she seethed dangerously. "And, what! A unicorn?" She snorted. "What was she, _blind? _I remember doing that, and it was a fire-breathing dragon. Silly cow. Don't you have to go to college in order to be a first grade teacher? It was CLEARLY a dragon."

"As much fun as tormenting Bridget is," Chris put in steering the conversation back to the topic of interest, "apart from the school, where else did you say you were?"

"Oh, right. I was in the hospital," Ben said. "Nowhere exciting, we're not talking the CIA here, but I've been working on it for a while and it's been really bugging me that I couldn't get in. But then when I was working on the school it suddenly came to me and there I was. I was going to put myself first on the list for a heart transplant, but then I thought better of it."

"You want a kidney instead?" Bridget asked. "If so, don't get any ideas. I use both of mine. Bitch."

Ben shook his head. "No. Firstly, I don't want to be peeing with your kidney because… ew. I think I may actually know where it's been. Secondly, I've decided that I want a liver. It's always good to have a spare one as a standby on ice. That way, you can completely enjoy drinking games and such."

"That's completely unethical you know that, right?" Nixa told him disapprovingly. "Those are private and confidential files. You can't just go snooping around in there."

Ben pulled a face. "I didn't _look_," he said. "Give me some credit here. I just did it to check if I could. And I can. So yay. I'm not about to go looking into private files. Mainly because I don't want to know what's wrong with people, or the plastic surgery they've had. I don't actually care."

Bridget's eyes lit up in wonderment and her mouth dropped open. "Oh my God. You can look that stuff up? Oh my GOD. I LOVE you Benjamin Olsen! This is huge. This is… okay… who's had what done…? OH! My next door neighbour. I SWEAR she's had a nose job, but—"

"Bridget!" Nixa warned tersely. "We're not looking at people's private files. What about moral decency? Didn't we just give Ken a speech about what good people we were?"

"Duh," Bridget said. "I know that. But, I mean…" Her eyes lit up all over again and she smirked, holding the trump card. "But… you could look and see once and for all whether Charlotte Jacobs just got a good bra or entirely new boobs…" she enticed in a singsong voice, beckoning Nixa over to the monitor. "Come oooooooon…"

"Who's Charlotte Jacobs?" Chris asked, stretching and yawning. "Do we hate her?"

"The one with the large boobs whose wardrobe seems to consist entirely of small rubber strips," Bridget informed him coldly. "I think you might be on ogling terms with her."

"Like you and Carl Bernard?" Chris shot back.

Bridget sniffed. "_He _is pretty. _She _is a two-dollar whore."

Nixa's face darkened. "She pushed me off the jungle gym once and I scraped my knee, then she made fun of my Band-Aid," she seethed. "Oh and once, when we were in fourth grade, she sat behind me and when we were doing art she painted my bunches brown. It's just because I'm blonde and she isn't."

"If this is the same Charlotte Jacobs that I'm thinking of, she's definitely blonde," Chris said, frowning. "Have I got the wrong slut?"

"Oh, sure, she's blonde on her _head_," Nixa informed in cattily. "All through junior high — where, by the way, she dumped a pair of my shoes in bucket the janitor was using filled with bleach because she didn't have a pair — she was this HORRIBLE mousey brown. It was UGLY. Nearly as bad as her braces. But then, suddenly, it's high school and BLONDE! Bitch. I hope the peroxide kills her."

"Um, okay, wow," Ben said, looking a little scared. He wheeled the chair backwards a little bit. "Miaow, maybe? Saucer of milk for the raging blonde, perhaps?"

Nixa growled in the back of her throat and threw her hands up into the air. "She just makes me so _mad_," she hissed. "She's so awful, and yet she's _sooooo _perfect it's like… ARGH. Okay. One file. One file and that's it. Then we back away and we can all still go to heaven."

Ben grinned, pulled himself closer to the computer and began typing at the keyboard. Within seconds, he'd pulled a file up onto the screen. "There. Is that her?" he asked, squinting at the details and trying to picture her.

"I'm going to hell, we're bad people, we're going to hell…" Nixa muttered under her breath, crowding in closer with Bridget and Chris, her eyes darting across the screen. "HA! There! Look! Breast enlargement and augmentation! I KNEW it! Good bra my ass!" Her three friends turned around to stare at her, and she blushed, stepping backwards and then going to sit back down on the couch. "Ooooookay. That was not a good version of Nixa. I did not like that Nixa. Charlotte Jacobs brings out the worst in me. I think it's time for me to go back to watching MTV…"

Ben began typing and eventually hit his final key with flourish. "How about you… watch MTV," he began, reading the screen and then cracking a grin, "then shove a cheese doodle up your nose like you did when you were four and have to be sedated to have it removed?"

Nixa's mouth dropped open and she blinked, making noises of disbelief. "Hello! Privacy!" she shrieked, vaulting the couch. "Get that off the screen! Now!" She slapped the top of his arm. "I

am going to KILL you, Ben. Don't laugh! It's not funny! It was an accident! I didn't mean to put it up there, and then I was too scared to tell anyone."

Ben, all but convulsing with laughter, brought up a shaking hand and hit 'Print'. Bridget's newly-fixed printer began to whir just as Nixa snatched a throw pillow from the couch and dragged his chair out from underneath him and proceeded to beat him around the head with the cushion while he was on the floor, curled up with his hands over his head and his stomach already aching from laughing.

Chris snatched the piece of paper from the printer when it was done and folded it up, shoving it into his pocket. Nixa saw him and made a lunge for the witch-whitelighter but he dodged backwards and she fell on her face.

"You're both DEAD!" she promised Ben and Chris, tossing the pillow so hard at Chris that he fell backwards into an armchair. "DEAD!"

* * *

**I know, I know. It's been far too long. I know. I'm not a good person. I'm sorry. But here! Chapter! And I already started working on the next one, I promise. Thank you for all of your reviews. You're all too good to me. .**

_**Twisted Flame.**_


	6. Chapter 6

Ken still couldn't believe that he was touching an actual skull. It had been gross enough for him just having look at them in the shop; imagining them with flesh on and a brain inside and now he was actually willingly making _contact_ with one. He had just about got over the shuddering stage, and could nearly touch it without flinching. Nearly. But the point was that he could touch it and that was good because he needed to be able to touch it for this stupid ritual to work.

He took a deep breath in and then let it out again. He reached to his left and grabbed a box of matches, striking one and letting the tip flare and die down before beginning to touch the match to the wicks of five black candles set out around him in the shape of a pentagram. When they were all alight he shook the match out and dropped it to the floor. The candles were the only source of light, their five flickering flames dancing in a draught. Beyond their glow, nothing could be seen of the rest of Ken's bedroom.

He flexed his fingers, balling his hands into fists to stop himself recoiling as he reached out towards the deformed skull, careful not to put his thumb through what was either a socket for a third eye or some kind of perfectly circular mouth positioned on the skull's head because that had grossed him out when he had done it earlier. Deciding that it would be better for him to use the horns to turn the thing over he did so quickly, wanting the least contact with it as possible. He stared into the gloomy depths of the skull. It sat awkwardly on the floor so that it was tilted backwards, meaning that there was less chance of whatever he put into it streaming out of the eye sockets, but there still wasn't much depth to it. He would have to just measure exactly and that would be that.

He looked over at the book, squinting at the page and trying to make out the cramped, crabbed writing by the inconsistent candlelight. A handful of ground wolfsbane root. He pushed the mound of ingredients contained in small clear plastic bags around until he came across the one labelled 'Wolfsbane Root'. Pouring a liberal amount into his palm, he slowly let it trickle into the depths of the skull. Eight mandrake seeds. A dried hellebore flower. A powdered fairy wing. That had stunned him slightly. Fairy wing? The very thought that fairies existed had always been laughable to him, and yet here he was tossing their ground body parts into a skull of an identified creature. The things that he was doing for Bridget.

And then that was it pretty much it except the small vial of the juice of belladonna berries. Five drops. He took the cork out and then, positioning his thumb at the top of the bottle so that only a tiny amount could escape, he dripped the thick liquid into the skull. Pretty much it. He grimaced, looking down at this hand. This wasn't the fun part at all. Swallowing, he picked up a knife from the floor and, gripping the handle so tightly that his hand was shaking, his jabbed his finger with it and sliced downwards. A bead of blood immediately welled from the skin, winding its way across the tip of the digit. He angled his finger downwards, letting the blood dribble into the skull and trying to ignore the pain.

A dark purple cloud immediately billowed from the depths, coiling its way through the various holes in the skull. Ken scooted backwards fearfully, not stopping until could smell burning and realised that a candle was scorching the back of his sweater. Patting his back quickly to make sure that nothing was going to burst into flames he steeled himself into going back forwards and, taking the skull by the horns again, he lifted it to the ceiling with both his hands and his voice shaking.

"Anubis, Nephthys, H-Hecate, Thanatos, N-Nix. Accept my offering," he intoned, stumbling over the names because of their unfamiliarity and the fact that he was still shaking just as much as his voice. The smoke stopped spewing from the neck of the skull and doubled in volume coming out of the eyeholes. "Herbs of poison, herbs of darkness, I present to thee. I willingly give over my lifeblood to you." The air in the room was thrumming with power. He was pretty sure that his hair was standing on end. The air was crackling with static — it felt like there was going to be a localised thunderstorm right in his bedroom. He swallowed, feeling his hands shift on the horns of the skull as they became slick with sweat. A bead of it ran down his back. "Grant me the power that I seek. Immortals, I beseech you. Give me the power."

Purple sparks suddenly erupted from all of the holes in the skull and the smoke vanished. Ken turned his face away, feeling the sparks falling onto his hands and bare arms, scorching them. The smell of singeing hair and flesh filled the room and he tightened his grip on the horns, determined not to let go as the glowing purple sparks ate into his flesh, releasing tiny coils of smoke.

Then, nothing. Nothing. The sparks stopped. There was nothing but silence, his heavy breathing, the closeness of the air and the sting of burning. Nothing. Disappointment causing his stomach to sink, he gently lowered the skull, which had been emptied of everything that he'd added, to the floor and inspected his burnt hands. Some of the burns were bleeding, others were just blistered and oozing a yellow secretion.

But then a cold wind began to wrap its way around the room, coiling its way around the candles and sending the flames guttering and sputtering to drown in pools of their own wax. The last candle was suddenly snuffed out, plunging the room into darkness save for the glowing wick until even that hissed and died. Then he swore he could hear voices on the wind, a thousand whispering voices coursing through the room, slicing through the earlier electric tension. The breeze ruffled his hair, almost caressing it, toying with it questioningly. Ken held his breath despite the pounding in his chest and ears and the pain that demanded he inhaled.

And then what felt like a hammer blow struck him hard in the chest, flinging him backwards. The cold wind seemed to burn at his chest, making its entrance into his body as he gasped for breath, the pain from the black candle behind him digging into his back entirely numbed by the feeling of this alien force twisting its way around his heart and then abusing that position in order to enter his bloodstream. It began to slip around his body and he could feel it. He could actually feel it. Power. He had power. It seemed to crackle and dance at his fingertips; it pulsated through every capillary in his body. An intense head rush hit him and it was all that he could do was give a dazed grin before his eyes rolled back into his head with the intensity of it all. Power.

Power…

He sat up violently. But what kind of power? He groped over to his bedside table and smacked the switch for his lamp with his hand, suddenly bringing harsh illumination to the space. He hissed, covering his eyes as his pupils seared. He sat on his bed and, staring at the switch, he waved a hand. Nothing. He waved a hand again. Still nothing. The switch wasn't moving. Gritting his teeth hard enough for his jaw to crack he concentrated, the tendons standing out in his neck. He felt the power come to his hand and he waved it again, but still the switch didn't budge. So, maybe it wasn't the power that he was expecting. He wasn't telekinetic. So what else was there? Probably nothing good. He was probably stuck with some stupid lameass power that he wouldn't even be able to _show _Bridget. And how would she believe him and like him if he couldn't prove it existed?

He pushed himself off the bed and growled angrily, picking up the skull from the floor and tossing it at the wall. It gave a sickening crack but didn't shatter. It just bumped to the floor and sat there, glaring at him with its empty eyes. The stupid thing wouldn't even destruct dramatically enough. Useless. Entirely useless.

He threw his hands up into the air and suddenly a grey blast of energy formed and shot itself towards the skull, blowing it apart. Bone fragments rained down all over the room and he was force to shield his face. When he looked back, there was nothing to indicate where the skull had been other than a scorch mark on the skirting board.

_**Quiet Please, I'm Stalking**_

Chris sighed and rolled his eyes. "I'm just saying that it's obviously very chemically different when it's in its two different states, that's all. And that is why I'm right and you're just… not."

Ben shook his head, swallowing his mouthful of Coke before continuing. "Nuh-uh. No. How is it different? All they do is interweave it. That doesn't change its chemical properties, does it?"

"It's not the process that does it. It's what they do to it _before _it's interwoven. What about the dyes they use? The _chemical _dyes. And you can't tell me that they just dump it right in their machines without _cleaning _it first. With _chemical _cleaning agents. Therefore, my argument is valid. Yours is not."

Ben paused for thought, drumming a staccato beat on the top of his Coke can. "Yeah, screw all of that so-called 'evidence' though. _I _think it _does_ and that, when it rains, the poor animals are lying in their fields going, 'Ow, ow, ow'."

"Oh, sure, because sheep can manage that," Bridget sniped sarcastically, rolling her eyes and shovelling a chip into her mouth. "Their voice boxes are just _so _developed."

Ben shook his head again. "Okay, so the 'Ow, ow, ow' part notwithstanding because, okay, sheep _can't _speak, but I maintain that sheep _have _to shrink when it rains. Their wool must get smaller when it rains. Which must squish the sheep something awful. Poor sheeps."

"So why don't sheep grow up all deformed and stuff because of how tight their wool is?" Chris persisted. "Maybe it's the curliness of the wool on the sheep that stops it shrinking when it rains, because sheep just _can't _shrink when it rains. People would notice this kind of thing."

"Have you ever gone into a field and seen sheep in the rain and checked to see if they've shrunk, though?"

Nixa, finally tiring of the conversation, slammed her copy of _Jane Eyre _down onto the table, open to save her place, and spoke up huffily. "Okay. Firstly, I can't believe that you two are arguing about this. Secondly, Bridget, I can't believe that you're chiming in and encouraging them. Thirdly, wool will only shrink if you wash it on too high a heat or use too harsh a detergent. Seeing as rain is neither too hot nor containing harsh detergents, we can safely conclude that neither sheep, nor my new angora sweater, thank God, will shrink in the rain. Happy?" Ben opened his mouth to argue, but Nixa cocked an eyebrow at him and raised her novel dangerously. "Not a word. Seriously. When I bought my sweater, I looked this up. I am, therefore, right. Now quiet before I let Bertha out to brain you."

"Uh… Bertha?" Ben asked.

Nixa rolled her eyes. "Read the book, Ben."

Ben shrugged, crumpling his Coke can. "I'll rent the movie."

"No you won't," Nixa told him in a singsong voice, settling back down with her book and doing her best to try and block the rest of the quad out. It was easier now she didn't have the constant annoying argument rattling around her ears.

Ben rolled his eyes. "No, but I'll read the Cliff Notes." He caught Nixa peering over her book at him and threw his hands up in the air. "Fine! I'll spoil myself online. I hate how well you know me."

"Ben, you're not even stupid," Nixa said patiently, although her voice was slightly masked by a tired sigh. "You're so far off from stupid. You'd have no problem kicking half your Bs and Cs up to As if you actually put some effort in."

"You sound like, I don't know, _every teacher I've ever had_," Ben grumbled. "And, you know, effort takes _effort. _And I don't have the inclination for that. I can get into a college with Bs, you know. And, besides, Computer App? The highest A in the class? Doesn't that say something?"

Nixa rolled her eyes again. "It says that you're a geek, firstly. And, secondly, you didn't put any effort into Computer App because it all comes entirely naturally to you."

Ben twisted his mouth, manipulating the ring pull on the top of his can until it came off. "You see my parade?" he asked, throwing out his hands. "It's now entirely sodden. In fact, the cloudburst was so severe that one of the guard member's flags has been hit by lightning and now they're fried."

Chris laughed, shaking his head. "I swear, those million monkeys with their typewriters that everyone is always going on about are inside you head, just chattering away and telling you what to say."

"'To be or not to be'," Ben intoned sarcastically, flicking the ring pull at Chris. "Those monkeys are meant to be writing Shakespeare, and I don't use iambic pentameter, so—"

"See!" Nixa shrieked triumphantly, slamming her book down again. "Right there! A smart utterance issuing from your mouth! Why don't you do that in class?"

Bridget was on her last fry and began scraping ketchup from the bottom of the polystyrene tray onto it. "Because," she said, putting the loaded fry into her mouth, "he already gets picked on for… _every_thing, therefore he doesn't want to add 'being smart' to their ammo."

"No, that's not the reason," Ben dismissed, giving her a disbelieving look. "You don't know me that well, you know."

Bridget raised her eyebrows incredulously and swallowed her chip. "Let's see…" She looked into the distant, frowning in recollection. "This morning, someone called you a loser as you were getting out of your car." She ticked the evidence off on her thumb. "Um… We were walking down the hallway and someone threw a football at the back of your head. Which, by the way, you never thanked me for catching before it hit you and tossing it in the trash." She tallied this point using her index finger. "Uh… We met up with Chris, someone tossed a ball of paper at _him, _actually, so I don't know if they counts but they DID ask you both when your honeymoon was gonna be, so I think that's one—"

"_Honeymoon?_" Chris cut in, realisation dawning across his features. "I heard 'funny spoon'. I've been trying to work out what the hell they said all day."

"Hello? Listing Ben's various torments here?" Bridget told Chris exasperatedly, gesturing with the hand with three fingers up. "I didn't even get to first period yet. Jeez. Rude."

"Yeah, I think we're done with that, though," Ben said, looking down into his lap and picking at his nails. "Because they were really less than fun the first time."

"Oh, Ben, come on. They suck and the second you let me kick their asses, I will. But now I've forgotten my point…" She frowned down at the polystyrene tray and began picking bits off the edge. "OH!" she cried suddenly, her head snapping up. "Right. Nixa, Ben is dumb out of necessity because if he were smart high school would be even harder for him."

Nixa, her head back in her book, gave the tiniest nod in reply and turned a page, reaching out and grabbing her bottle of water. She unscrewed the cap and took a sip, then put it back on the table. Bridget continued demolishing her container, sprinkling the white pieces into the middle of it.

Suddenly, someone threw their bag onto the table, catapulting the container sideways and sending a shower of polystyrene pieces everywhere. It knocked over the water, splashing Nixa and soaking her book and top and then running all over the table onto her lap. The blonde shriked in indignation, hastily standing up and righting the bottle. There were polystyrene pieces slipping down her top and she pulled a piece out of her hair, shaking her blouse vigorously to dislodge whatever had gone down there and try to dry it off. Ben looked mildly vexed and shook his head, throwing free the pieces in his hair, whilst Chris combed them out with his fingers.

"Oh. Sorry, heads and all that," someone announced, coming close to the table.

"Ken," Bridget deadpanned, sweeping the bits on the table back into the tray. "Hi. I'm going to go toss this in the trash before someone else flings it everywhere. I'll be back. Soon. Maybe."

He skirted the table and grabbed her arm as she moved to get up, shaking his head. "No. No. Come on. Look. I've got something to show you all."

"You're touching me," Bridget observed, glaring at the offending arm.

"I've got to show you guys this. It's _so _cool!" he enthused, his eyes dancing. He was jumping a little on the spot.

"You know what else would be '_so _cool'?" Bridget asked, mocking his tone. "If you took your hand the fuck off my arm before I'm forced to _break your nose._"

Ken looked at her, frowned, shrugged, and removed his hand. "Okay. Jeez." He widened his eyes and gave her a weird look, then shrugged again and proceeded back around the table. He climbed onto the bench in-between Ben and Chris, shoving Ben to the very edge of the seat.

"No, it's okay. Don't worry. I wasn't sitting there or anything," the witch bit out sarcastically, rolling his eyes and clearing all of his stuff towards him to give Ken room in the table. "I'm fine, just teetering on the edge. Really. It's not a problem."

"Okay, fine. Good," Ken said distractedly, not having entirely heard Ben.

"I think you need to watch your caffeine intake," Chris commented to Ken, fixing the freshman with a slightly bemused but mostly annoyed look. Both of the kid's legs were bobbing up and down, and he was drumming his fingers on the Formica tabletop with an annoying rattling sound. His eyes were darting too and fro and he kept grinning and licking his lips. He seemed completely wired.

"What? Oh. Yeah, never mind. I've so got to show you this," Ken told them all, leaning forward like a conspirator, grinning again. "Last night, the coolest thing happened. I was doing nothing in particular and suddenly BAM! The most _amazing _thing ever happened. I don't know how or anything, but… Look. Watch."

"Will there be puppets?" Ben asked dryly, trying to scoot up to gain a little more bench to sit on. "I really like puppets."

"Ben… shut up."

Ben blinked. "Um… huh? I thought I just heard you tell me to shut up."

"You did," Ken shot back. "Just shut up for once and just look at this, okay? It's not much to ask, you know." He looked around and then lunged for Ben's Coke can, placing it in the centre of the table. "Ready? Nixa? Come on, why are you reading? Look!"

Nixa cocked an eyebrow and stared the freshman down with an icy blue glare. "I don't know what's got into you kid, but I, for one, do _not _do being ordered around, okay? Remember that because, next time you do so, I'll snap your neck. Get it?"

"Come on. Fine. Sorry. But just look."

Nixa slapped her book down on the table again. "A page. One measly, lousy page. That's all I've managed to get done in about twenty minutes."

"Reading sucks. This is much better." The freshman concentrated on the Coke can and then flicked a wrist. Immediately, a grey energy blast shot out of his hand, heading towards the can. Chris immediately jumped, his eyes widening in shock, and froze the entire quad as fast as he could move.

"Oh my God," Ben said, swallowing and staring at the energy blast. "How… how… he… Huh? What the hell is going on? He has a _power _now?"

"I don't know," Chris replied distractedly, the majority of his energy going into keeping the entire quad frozen in time. "But let's do something about it, _fast_, before someone makes their way out here."

"Wait, Ken is frozen…" Ben commented, narrowing his eyes. "Ken has a power and he's _frozen._ Do we need to whip out a calculator to do the math or do we just conclude right away that he's—"

"—not a good witch," Chris finished, groaning and leaning his forehead on the tabletop. "Why does this have to be so damn complicated? But, you know, he can't be a demon, because he had no powers the other day. Unless he _did _have powers the other day and just didn't reveal them to us… And, seriously, please. Do something about the Coke can that's about to explode before everyone unfreezes."

"Just unfreeze the energy blast and nothing else," Ben suggested with a shrug. "Can will go boom and then you can unfreeze everyone else without them noticing."

Chris just looked at him. "Have I ever told you how grateful that I am that you don't freeze? I'm here losing my head and there's you with your logical explanation." He flicked a wrist in the direction of the energy blast, reanimating it. The air filled with the stench of burning paint as the design on the can dripped and melted before it shot off the table like a rocket some twenty feet in the air with a small explosion. It curved into an arc and clattered to a stop somewhere on the other side of the quad.

"He is so not safe with that power," Ben commented in slight awe, his eyes locked on the smouldering can. "How… how can he have it? Where did it come from? And why is it so much better than being able to turn stuff to ice?"

"I wonder if we can convince him that it didn't work…?" Chris mused, only half-talking to Ben.

"Just unfreeze them all. We'll get to the bottom of this later," Ben assured him, watching as Chris flicked his other wrist and reanimated the quad.

_**Quiet Please, I'm Stalking**_

**Hey there. I'm so sorry for the wait. It's mainly because I'm still stuck in school and that it's just been completely insane what with one thing and the other. But, looky! Chapter! It's past midnight now and I'm due in school tomorrow… today… so I'll just post this and I'll write out my thanks to all of you reviewers tomorrow. In the meantime, my thanks to Minimonkey89, Stephanie, cd and Whisper17. As usual, I'd love to say more but I'm scared of wrath from up on high. But thank you all the same.**

**Well I didn't get it up at just past midnight. I waited until one this morning but was still 'experiencing heavy traffic' and wouldn't let me do _any_thing, let alone post. So for that, I apologise. Now, however, I get time to reply to y'all. Yay.**

_**Twisted Flame.**_


	7. Chapter 7

A vague pain in his palm brought Ken's attention back into the real world somewhat, making him pause in his striding and release his hand from its tightly-clenched fist to look at it. One of his nails and punctured the flesh due to the strength that he was clenching his hands with and blood was pooling in the crescent-moon-shaped gouge, threatening to spill over and run down his wrist. He stuck it into his mouth and sucked on it, walking onwards again. Who cared about a little bit of pain, especially when he'd been put through the pain of all of that embarrassment at lunch.

Ben. Ben had done it. Ben had somehow stopped his power working and then had mocked him when everyone realised that 'nothing' had happened. When he knew full well that something had happened. He'd seen his new energy blasting power leave his hand and head for the Coke can. He knew what he had done. And, even after the power just mysteriously vanished, the Coke can had gone and the table where it had been was slightly scorched in a black ring exactly the same shape as the Coke can. So _something _had happened and Ben had stopped it. Probably with one of his stupid rhymes. It was Ben's fault that Bridget had looked at him expectantly and then laughed at the lack of anything happening. Ben's fault that he had looked stupid in front of Bridget. All because Ben and Bridget were dating and Ben was too pathetic to handle a little competition.

It made him so _mad! _He ground his teeth and punched the air. A trashcan exploded with a loud metallic clanging noise, spewing rubbish all over the grass and the sidewalk. He breathed hard, looking down at his hands. Okay, so the power happened to be a little hard to control but he was getting better. He'd managed to get away without blasting Ben earlier when Ben had pissed him off.

Ben and Chris had looked at him with panic, though, when he thought about it. That was not a bad feeling. Actually, it was a pretty damn good feeling. He grinned. He'd freaked out two juniors (with insane amounts of power) and he was just a lowly freshman. But then they'd left him just sitting at the table, saying that they all had to go and they had dragged Bridget and Nixa with them. Instead of congratulating him and welcoming him into their group because he had a power, they'd just dumped him. Why hadn't this new ability made a difference? It wasn't _fair. _Even though he'd scared them, he still hadn't managed to become part of their group.

He looked around the deserted parking lot. It was after lunch now and he should be in class but, for the first time ever, he'd just skipped out and had come to the front of the school to fume. In hindsight it probably hadn't been the best idea, considering that he should be in class and yet he was wandering around in plain sight of everyone, but it didn't matter. There was no one here, anyway, but… but there was Ben's jeep.

Ben and his stupid jeep. Ben and his stupid jeep and his stupid licence to drive said stupid jeep. The stupid jeep in which Ben and Bridget had made out. His eyes burning he spun on his heel and wrenched a twisted piece of metal from the remains of the trashcan with a loud screech. It was jagged and pointed at the end and he tested it with his thumb, slicing a thin layer of skin off, but not enough to warrant bleeding. He crossed the parking lot and slipped between two other cars until he was standing in front of Ben's jeep. His mouth turning up maliciously at the corners he flicked a wrist with relish and sent an energy blast hurtling at the windshield. It immediately shattered, raining whitened pebbles of glass onto the front two seats.

The alarm sounded shrilly and the headlights flashed at him. He knew that he didn't have long before people started to come out to see what all of the noise was, so he grabbed his jagged spear of metal and quickly began scratching deeply into the hood of the car.

_**Quiet Please, I'm Stalking**_

Rolling his eyes, the shopkeeper bent at the waist once more to retrieve several candles from the floor that had fallen from their table and their pyramid formation. Something had to be done about this. There had to be a better way to display them, surely. He just dumped them on the table, in no mood for tidying. The shop was closed now and all he wanted to do was get home to the TV and a microwave meal. The last thing that he wanted to do was be stuck here picking up stupid candles.

He walked back to the counter and, reaching over, began flicking the switches that operated the display lights. One by one they darkened until only the dim overhead bulbs were left lighting the room, filtering down from the ceiling which was wreathed in gloom. The main light switches were at the back of the shop, next to the back entrance, which was how he intended to leave the building for the night.

The front door rattled as he crossed to the back of the shop and he looked up, slightly startled, before checking the clock hung behind the counter. The shop had closed an hour ago, and the closing times were posted on the door. He shrugged. If whoever it was couldn't read then that was their lookout. He wasn't going to delay his plans any longer. He flipped the first of the switches off and heard the door rattling again, this time more urgently and more violently.

"We're closed!" he yelled in the general vicinity of the front of the shop. "We're open again for business at nine tomorrow. Please come back then." The door stopped rattling and, satisfied, he flipped the remaining three light switches, plunging the shop into almost entire darkness.

A loud explosion suddenly made him jump backwards into a mirror hanging on the wall, dislodging it from its hook and sending it careening into the floor. The frame split and the glass shattered, spilling reflective shards onto the floor with the melodic tinkling noise of falling glass synonymous to that coming from the front of the shop. Someone had smashed the glass in the door with the explosion.

Footsteps – shoes crunching on shards of glass – reached the shopkeeper's ears and he groped around for the light switches, finally locating them and flicking them all on at once. The lights above him were filtered by a thin smoke coiling up towards them and he could see that glass had been blown down the entire corridor of books and had spilled into the shop beyond. The crunching of footsteps came nearer.

"Who's there?"

"A customer," the blunt reply sounded, before the voice's owner stepped into the light. "So, how about some service?"

"You!" the shopkeeper sputtered, his eyes widening. The teenager he'd sold the dark arts book and all of the ingredients too. The kid's eyes were the wrong colour. They were darker and seemed to glint malignantly in the light, but perhaps that was just because of the extra light glittering off the dilated pupils. He seemed paler, as if he'd got sick, and the blowing up of the shop's door had covered his face in a fine film of soot, through which a bead of sweat meandered, wiping his face back to its natural colour as it went. He was breathing heavily, as if he'd been running.

"Me," Ken said coolly, adding a shrug. He leaned against the bookcase on his left, trying to act nonchalant and threatening whilst using the support to try and stop the shop spinning. "I'm going to be needing another one of those weird skulls. Now."

"You've blown half of the front of my shop in!" the shopkeeper yelled accusingly, recovering some of his bravado. "I'm not going to give you anything!"

"Well, give it to me, watching me take it as you lie on the floor… It's all the same to me. Neither option stands out as the best one. However, for you… you'll probably make the smart choice. So I'll be needing one of your skulls. _Please_. As quickly as possible."

He had decided that he needed to do the entire ritual again and gain another power. He had spent a lot of time thinking about it and realised that, if Bridget still felt the need to dismiss him then he still wasn't as good as Ben and Chris with only one power. So he'd get another one. As simple as that. There was a small part of his mind that he seemed to have retained telling him that what he was doing was wrong, irrational, completely reckless and stupid but it was getting easier and easier to squash that part of his brain. It belonged to the old loser Ken anyway; the one that would have come back at nine tomorrow for the skull instead of just taking it. This Ken had the power to get things done the way that he wanted them and, by God, he was going to use that power to the best of his advantage. And now the advantage was getting another skull and then going home and doing the ritual and receiving another power and demonstrating _that _to Bridget and sending Ben Olsen flying across the quad if he dared to interfere this time.

"Get out of here before I call the cops," the shopkeeper snarled, glaring at Ken. "You're just some punk kid and have no business ordering me around. Get out."

Ken laughed mirthlessly, smirking. "Yeah. Some punk kid you gave a book to that pumped him full of dark arts that allow him to do… _this._" He flicked a wrist and sent an energy blast at one of the round tables, blowing it to pieces and scattering the contents of its top around the room. The tablecloth fluttered to the floor, smouldering around the edges.

"Giving you that book was a serious misjudgement," the shopkeeper said. "I never should have assumed—"

Ken shrugged. "You were blinded by dollar signs. Not your fault. However, I think I overpaid last time. So a skull please. _Now_." He paused, cocking his head. "You know, I think that's the third time I've had to repeat myself. I don't like having to repeat myself. Because the dumb kid I was before had to do that all of the time, because nobody listened to him because he was some stupid stuttering loser. So I really don't want to be repeating myself anymore. Got it?" He flicked another wrist and the glass in the counter imploded, setting off a shrill alarm and showering the swords within with glass. "You've got lots of stock to destroy and I could probably do this for a while. So…"

"Karma," the shopkeeper spat, rounding the counter and reaching underneath for the requested skull and turning off the counter's alarm at the same time. "It's called Karma. And, by God, you have so much bad energy coming towards you you're going to feel like you've been hit by a Mack truck."

Ken cocked an eyebrow and, with effort, pushed away from the bookcase and crossed to the counter, grabbing the skull. "Yeah," he said, tossing the skull into the air and catching it. "I'll do my best to bear that in mind." He walked off back to the shattered front door, turning around and flicking a wrist and blasting a display case to pieces. "You have a good evening now." He stepped over the wreckage of the door onto the street and quickly disappeared.

_**Quiet Please, I'm Stalking**_

"My dad is going to _kill _me," Ben groaned, leaning backwards on the couch and covering his face with his hands. "He's actually going to be digging my grave the second I tell him about it."

"That is all you've been saying since you found out that it was your car making all of that noise in the parking lot," Bridget told him in exasperation. "Will you just quit it before I do your dad a favour and kill you before he finds out?"

Ben sighed and rubbed his hands over his face. "Yeah. Yeah, I know. I'm sorry. I just… ugh. It's not exactly something that I can just buff out, you know? It's not like he wanted to trust me with the car in the first place. He's been complaining about my irresponsibility ever since my grandparents _bought _it for me."

"What do you mean, you can't buff it out?" Nixa asked sarcastically, looking up from her nail filing. "I'm sure you can polish out a completely shattered windshield, two broken headlights and 'Bitch. Die, scum' scratched onto the hood. Elbow grease is all it'll take to fix it."

"Well, considering that you're so chirpy about it how about I hand you a cloth and you can put that theory to the test?" Ben asked.

Nixa frowned, pretending to consider. "You know I would in a heartbeat," she said at last, "but doing so would leave me with my tips shot to hell." She waggled her nails at him and put on an apologetic face. "So I'm going to have to turn down that generous offer, I'm afraid."

"Well, find out who did it and then claim from them… somehow. Maybe your dad doesn't have to find out," Chris suggested with a shrug, not looking up from the Book of Shadows.

"That's a good idea! I'll have plenty of time to get the claim from someone in the hour I have before he gets back from work. Or, better, I'll just go and strike him blind! Then he'll never know!" Ben chirped sarcastically, nodding hugely. "Chris, you genius you!"

Chris did look up to shoot him a glare. "Okay, firstly, doing two things at once here—"

"—a miracle for a man," Nixa interjected loftily, stretching out both of her hands to check that her self-manicure was as even as it was going to get.

Chris rolled his eyes. "Can we burn our bras and do the Up With Women stuff another time? Like, after I've finished my sentence?"

Nixa nodded sagely, as if what Chris had said had been very profound. "Okay. Yeah. I agree. That will give me time to run home and grab one, right?" Ben and Chris cocked their eyebrows at her or, rather, her chest and it was her turn to roll her eyes this time. "I'm seventeen, guys. I have three years, tops, left of being able to do this. I'm going to do it all I can, okay?"

"So… no bra at all?" Ben asked, cocking his head. "Huh. Wait, does that—"

"Hey! Yeah. Hey. Chris, go back to looking up ways Ken could have turned demonic. Ben, go back to bitching about your stupid car. This conversation is rating a twenty-seven out of ten on my Uncomfortable-O-Meter. The thing is about to explode. So let's all just forget about the last few minutes. Okay?" Bridget implored, fixing them all with a look. "Okay?" she intoned slowly, more threatening. Chris looked back down at the Book and Ben began picking his nails. "Okay. Good!"

Chris blinked, rubbing his eyes and turning another page apathetically. This was hard when you didn't know what exactly you were looking for. In the demonic world, there was never just a single nasty out there that could have done one particular crime. Ken could be possessed, but then again he could also be being used as a vessel for power brokers. Or a million other ways that the power could have just appeared. Chris twisted his mouth in thought. "Ben, can you get us a look at Ken's school record?"

Ben snorted. "Don't insult my by asking me _if _I can. Of _course _I can." He had slid his bag underneath the couch that he was sitting on and he reached underneath and retrieved it, pulling out his laptop. Give me five minutes." When the laptop had loaded, it connected automatically to the Manor's wireless network, just as he had configured it to when he'd set the entire thing up for the Halliwells. He still held the master password for the router written down somewhere at home. He doubted any of the family even knew it. They didn't need it — he'd made sure all of their computers connected automatically as well. He began typing, determined to get down below his personal best for getting in to something with as lax security as the school.

"Can't they tell that you've been looking at all of their files?" Nixa asked, walking around behind Ben and wrinkling her nose at what was the undecipherable mass streaming across the screen.

"The school probably could if it looked hard enough, which it won't. It doesn't even have a warning to let them know when they're security is being breached. Their system sucks and they should fire the technician who implemented it. However, if they DID have a warning then it's likely that they'll have the resources to trace it, in which case I'd be careful enough to bounce the signal to somewhere else, so—"

Nixa cut him off with a disgusted noise. "Why did I ask? Why? I still can't manage to put videos on my iPod and yet I go and ask him about what he's doing," she grumbled to herself. It made her feel inadequate, in a way, because Ben had such a skill and such a talent that she couldn't even ever hope to acquire. And therefore, there was someone in the room more intelligent than her at the moment. She sighed. These arrogant moments sucked and she hated them but what she was feeling was true. Being second-best bugged her. It always had and would always continue to do so. And it was irrational, she knew, and also completely unexplainable to boot, but… but she wouldn't be her without it.

Ben hummed to himself quietly as he worked, not even entirely sure himself of the tune. He was nearly in. He typed more earnestly, determined to beat his best time for breaking into the school's system, watching the clock in the bottom right hand corner. But it was twelve minutes before he was in, which was tying with his best time and he sighed, shrugging as he accessed Ken's permanent record. "Okay. Got it. What do we look for?"

"Do you think the school notes down things like demonic power acquiring?" Bridget asked. "If so, I really worry about what's on my permanent record…"

"Well, I can assure you that there is nothing about you acquiring demonic powers on your permanent record," Ben told her, shaking his head. "So you're probably safe."

Bridget exhaled sharply through her nose in annoyance. "Okay, do you know how unfair this is? Can we get a look at _your _permanent record?"

Ben scratched the back of his head and then tilted it in a pantomime of thought. He inhaled through his teeth, pretending to consider it. "You know, see, you could, but I'd be ruined if the secret double life documented on it got out into the public domain. Things would never ever be the same."

"You mean like the time you set fire to that pasta you were boiling in the Home Ec lab and dropped the extinguisher on your teacher's foot, putting her on crutches for a month? That kind of thing?" Chris cut in with, grinning lopsidedly at his friend's death glare.

Ben sniffed. "No, actually," he said as dignifiedly as he could, looking back at the computer screen and scrolling down.

"So we're talking the library books you returned thirteen months late?" Chris asked. "I swear, you've got to be the only kid in history to get something like that noted down on his permanent record." He paused. "Or, you know, the only kid in history to wait a year and a month before returning some books… You can take your pick."

"OKAY," Ben began loudly, completely drowning out a comment that Bridget had been about to make. "Okay. Here. Ken has… done absolutely nothing of interest in High School. He's never had a detention, he does his assignments, a pretty solid C stroke B student… Oh, hey, look at that. He did nothing of interest in Junior High either. Go figure. No clubs… No societies, no athletics… He's _beige_." He continued scrolling down, not finding anything that jumped out at him as strange and unusual in the slightest. No strange behaviour leaning towards the new power he had and the stalkerish tendencies he was exhibiting. He sighed and was about to close his laptop when he had a thought. "I'll pull up his schedule for tomorrow. We can tail him and see if he does anything odd. Can I send this to the printer in your room, Chris?" To top off access to the Halliwell's wireless network, he also had each of their printers' software installed on his laptop. Chris sometimes complained that Ben had more use of the computers at his house than he did.

"Tail him? Can we put someone else on that duty?" Bridget asked. "He's been following me around all of this time. The last thing that I want to do is do the same thing to him and give him completely the wrong idea. He might think I'm madly in love with him or something. And then he'd have to lose his head. And I'd get arterial spray all over me. And that would be gross. So I don't want to stalk him. Someone else gets that job."

"Chris, the printer is going downstairs and I didn't touch it," Wyatt's voice came from the stairs. "And I don't know why it's doing it. It's probably broken again. Is your loser computer geek of a friend up there with you on hand to fix it?"

Ben rolled his eyes to the ceiling and sighed heavily, slumping back in his seat. "Yup. The loser computer geek of a friend is sitting right here, Wyatt. And he's also using the printer. So you can go back to your night alone with your right hand."

Wyatt's footsteps sounded on the stairs and Ben sighed again, louder this time. "Just my right hand? Yeah. That's never enough. My left just _has_ to be part of the deal as well. It's imperative," he called. There was a pause as four faces were pulled at that particular piece of information, and then Wyatt continued, "Hey, is Skanky Barbie up there too? Perhaps I could use hers. It never hurts to have spares."

"Ew!" Bridget shrieked indignantly at Wyatt's advancing footsteps on the stairs. "Not even if I had a vat of acid to dip my hand in afterwards. Bite me."

"Whereabouts? Wait! No. Don't give me requests. I'll surprise you," Wyatt told her, sticking his head around the door and wiggling his eyebrows in Bridget's general direction. His face cracked into a grin. "Aaaah… So many places to choose from…"

Ben screwed up his face, revolted. "Oh, God, that is gross. Ew. Someone burn my eyes out please? I don't want to be seeing images of that all of the _rest of my life_. One of you needs to pay for my therapy, just so you know. I don't mind which one, as long as someone does because, _Jesus. _Ew. Isn't it some kind of crime to unleash that kind of thing on the public?"

"Seriously, if those teeth come anywhere near me I'll knock them out and wear them as fashion accessories," Bridget threatened, getting to her feet and shifting her weight forward, balling her hands into fists. "And I totally mean that."

Wyatt gave a huge pretence of sighing and then crossed his arms across his chest, his legs at his ankles, and leaned against the doorjamb, grinning one more. "So, that's a no to teeth but a yes to hands?"

Bridget's nostrils flared and her eyes darted around the room, alighting on the couch on which Ben was sitting. She snatched the couch cushion from underneath him, bumping him suddenly down about three inches. She flung it at Wyatt.

"Hey! Ow!" Ben whined, shifting his laptop off of his lap. "That hurt! Just leave me here to sit on the springs, why don't you?"

"Hey! No dissing Aunt Pearl's antique couch!" Wyatt chided, waving his hand and sending the couch cushion hurtling back into Ben's direction. "It may attack you back."

Rolling his eyes, Ben flicked a wrist and created a solid block of ice hanging in the air. The couch cushion hit it and glanced off, bouncing towards Chris. The witch-whitelighter looked up just in time to see the slab of fabric and springs careening towards him and gestured, freezing it in midair and then swatting it to the floor in annoyance.

"Hey, can we focus here? This is kind of important, you know?" he asked in exasperation, fixing Bridget and Wyatt with a look.

"Why?" Nixa whined, extending the word childishly. "Why is it so important? I have calculus to do that's due tomorrow. _That's _important."

"Well, if you _want_ to be on the receiving end of a psycho's possibly-uncontrollable new power then nope. This is so not important. Don't worry about it. However, if you'd rather you didn't get hit by whichever freaky-ass power he was demonstrating, then I suggest you stick here with me until we get to the bottom of this."

"Chris, chill. Your neurosis is going to drive you into an early grave," Wyatt informed his brother, rolling his eyes. "Calm down. And tell me what's going on. It sounds kinda intriguing. And dangerous. And I always like to think of Ben going into danger."

"Oh, funny," Ben bit back sarcastically, closing the lid of his laptop and sliding it back into his bag. "Did you ever think of trying stand up for when you're laughed out of every college you apply to?"

Wyatt snorted. "Come on. Look at me. Like this face is going to get me laughed out of any application board meetings. Providing there's women on the panel I'm in."

"What if they're all lesbians?" Nixa asked in a deadpan tone, but still managing to convey a spark of interest, as if she was generally wondering. "Then what will happen?"

"Well, they're hardly going to be lesbians once they've _met _me, are they?" Wyatt replied with a grin.

"Nope. They won't be lesbians anymore. You'll drive them to being _nuns_," Bridget shot at Wyatt scornfully. "They'll never feel clean after the slime oozing off you gets an airing."

"Huh. That's funny. So when are you picking up your habit, Sister Bridget?" Wyatt asked her with a smirk, which went wider as he saw the glare she was giving him. "You know, you don't look like you're on your way to getting hitched to God and we spent rather a _lot _of time together in that closet…"

Nixa's eyes widened and she put a hand to her mouth. "Closet? Oh my God, Bridget, you didn't? Tell me you—"

"—need to kick him in a very delicate place to crank up his voice a dozen octaves or so? Yeah. Yeah, I do," Bridget finished pointedly, glaring at Nixa.

Ben frowned and was about to ask a question when Wyatt cut him off. "So, kiddies, what's the what up here? What's going on?" He sat down on a spare chair and took in Ben's laptop and his brother combing the Book of Shadows. "It looks like research mode… Something serious? Something serious after Ben that could be a serious threat to his life?"

"Oh, God! My sides! The pain of them splitting!" Ben threw back, heavily sarcastic. "My advice before still stands. Try stand up. _Standing up and leaving._"

"Hm…" Wyatt mused, tilting his head. He shrugged, slid lower into his chair and then interlaced his fingers behind his head, crossing his legs at the ankles. Stretching languidly, he continued, "Well, upon major consideration, I've decided that you can go to hell. So, demon? Warlock? Big bad in neither of the above categories? What have we got?"

"Psychotic, possibly demonic stalker for Bridget," Chris filled in for Wyatt shortly, still not looking up from the Book.

Wyatt's eyebrows shot up. "Huh. How weird. Someone wants to stalk Bridget?"

"Thank you! That's what I said!" Ben said, throwing his hands in the air. "See, Bridget? It's not just me."

"Ben…?" Nixa asked suddenly, her voice pitched higher. She smiled at him and began twirling a strand of hair around her finger, tilting her head. "You know how you're like my _best _friend…?"

Ben groaned. "Oh, man. Requests that begin like this _suck._ What? What do you want? And how long is it going to take me?"

Nixa shrugged. "That depends how good you are. Okay. So. It looks like I'm going to have to just blow off my calculus work. Because this is taking more than a while, and I can't go to the class without anything done, so… you know, just this once, because I don't want to lose my attendance record and because this _is _demonically related and demons ruin my life enough as it is… can you make it look like my teacher marked me as present tomorrow rather than absent?"

"Miss Moral and Ethics, huh?" Bridget asked, a wry smile twisting her mouth. "Welcome to the dark side. Once you get to this point, there's no leaving."

Nixa sighed. "Fine. Fine. Yes, you're right. I'll just stay up and do the damn work and hand it in tomorrow."

"What? Wait!" Bridget implored. "You only just got to the dark side! You can't leave now! We have… mini muffins and stuff!"

"Baked goods and you, Princess McSlutstein? Wow. What's holding me on this loser-ish side?" Wyatt asked. "This Dark Side that you speak of sounds incredibly alluring round about now."

"The fact that it's highly likely that Bridget baked said goods is what is keeping you on this side," Ben told him. "I mean, she once had a disaster once boiling water."

Bridget narrowed her eyes, walked over, and clipped him upside the head. "Firstly, that wasn't my fault. I forgot about the water and it all just disappeared. Secondly, I'll have you know that I bought my goods from the Dark Side's bakery. So they will taste good."

"Fine. And ow. But fine. The fact that you purchased your baked goods rather than baking them yourself gives me some confidence. But hang on. I'm just trying something…" He had been typing furiously since Nixa had asked him about changing her attendance record, and slammed his finger home on 'Enter'. "There! I knew it!"

"What? What did you know?" Nixa asked, crossing the room again and standing behind him so she could see his laptop again. "What are you doing?"

"I'm looking at Ken's attendance record. The teachers take attendance at the beginning of each lesson, and they are then fed into the computer at the end of the day. Anyway, look. Ken was in class all morning today and then, look, it hits lunchtime, he flips out and shows us his demon powers, and he suddenly skips the entire afternoon. And trashes my car."

"I'm with you up until the whole 'trashing your car' thing. How do you know that he did it?"

"I know," Ben said simply, shrugging and closing his laptop. "Trust me. I just know."

_**Quiet Please, I'm Stalking**_

Ken fell backwards onto his bedroom floor, a wide grin plastered all over his face. His face and forehead were damp with sweat and he felt a little dizzy, but, most importantly, he felt alive. All over. Tingling and crackling. He was invincible. He could do _anything._ And, this time, he hadn't smashed the skull so he could do the ritual over again if he wanted to. Drunkenly, he watched the ceiling lurch and watched the display of floating lights shimmering across it. He gasped and his pupils expanded and his grin drew wider. This was… This was _power. _Real, proper power. And he had it. He had another power and he could get more _so easily_. There was no limit to his abilities.

Tomorrow, Ben was dead.

* * *

**Firstly, I want to say that there is no way I'll ever take this long to update this fic again. My mother fic is another matter (cough) but, for this one, I won't take this long, I promise, and have even started on the next chapter. Anyway, things are building towards the climax now. Hope all was enjoyed.**

**_Twisted Flame_**


	8. Chapter 8

Ken sat under the shade of a tree. It felt good to be sitting down. Good to feel the rough bark at his back through his t-shirt, because it was contact with something real. Something anchored to the world, and thus an anchor for him. He was feeling not himself. So not himself. And it wasn't just the apparent cold he was coming down with. Sure, the fever and the shaking and the headache and the dizziness were not helping with him feeling like himself, but it was more than that. He felt… different.

He was _changing _somehow, becoming detached from his world and turning more and more towards the magical world. The alien magical world that, no matter what he told himself, he couldn't fit in with. Not really. He had powers in him but even they felt wrong, cooped up, perhaps, until he used them, unleashing them. Then they became intoxicating because he wanted to use the powers again just to dispel the pent-up feeling inside him. It was hard. Confusing. He'd been raised with morals, manners, and they all told him that his attack on the shopkeeper and his property had been wrong. His powers, on the other hand… they were telling him that it was right. So right. And that he should do it again.

He knew which one would win out eventually, and that scared him because he feared what he might do if he didn't have to hold himself back anymore. It was starting to unnerve him a little. But only a little. Although now, hidden underneath the safe shade of a tree and staring at Bridget across the quad, that feeling began to melt away like ice under halogen lamps. Everything he was going through was for her. It was all worth it. Even if he was feeling pangs of guilt over what had happened at the shop, it was all worth it. And besides, with each passing hour the guilt got less and less along with most of the rest of his emotions. Pretty much only the feelings towards Bridget still burned strong. The rest of them had just begun to slowly fade into the background, almost as if he'd never been granted human emotion at all, except the hate and anger towards Ben which flared every time he saw the junior walking around with his friends, laughing as if he didn't have a care in the world.

Ken's mouth twitched upwards at the corners, exposing his teeth in a nasty smile. Well, now he had a care in the world. Now he had trashed Ben's car, Ben knew that someone was after him, and that was obviously preying on his mind, Ken noticed, as Ben walked around. The witch seemed more downcast than usual, laughing less and joking less and Bridget was definitely doling out fewer of those goddamn flirtatious punches of hers. He'd started to stare off into space and frown a lot, the weight of worries beginning to hit. Good. It was good to know that he was managing to induce these feelings in Ben.

He was staying out of the way, though. He had to admit that particular piece of cowardice. He had seen what Ben had done in that alley with that demon, and he had no desire to be on the receiving end of any of that. Not yet. Not until he was more powerful. Which didn't look set to happen, not since the ritual last night had failed. He hadn't got a single power from it. He'd tried all sorts to try and activate a power within him, but there was nothing. Just the energy blasting power and nothing else. He had been about to try again but suddenly hadn't felt up to it and had fallen on his bed, fully clothed, and tossed and turned the entire night, waking to find the sheets clammy with sweat and pulled free of the mattress, strangling him in a cocoon.

But tonight he'd feel better. Tonight he'd have the energy to do the ritual again and this time it would work. He probably had missed some words or something. He hadn't been feeling well at all. That would make sense, he reasoned.

A halo of light shimmered on Bridget's long, dark hair. She was wearing it down today, he noted. She hardly ever did that. He didn't think he'd ever seen her with it down. It flowed around her shoulders like inky water, setting off her pale cheeks and dark eyes so much that it took his breath away. She was beautiful. Perfect. And she would be his. Even if he had to crush Ben in the process.

Suddenly, he began to feel a tugging at his body, or rather… _inside_ his body. As if he was going to be sick, only not, as the feeling was coming from his heart and not his stomach. He couldn't feel his back against the tree anymore. The trunk was no longer anchoring him. He couldn't feel… _any_thing. Not the grass under his hand, or his bag under his other hand. He was completely floating, almost, not able to touch, to feel, and then, just as he was about to start panicking and shouting…

He was staring at Chris. Right in the face from less than three feet away. How… how had he got over here? Panicking, his first thought was backing the hell away before one of them did something to him, but he realised that he was sitting down and he toppled backwards. In a flash, Nixa had caught him and propped him back on his seat.

"Hey, missy, careful. What's in that juice box of yours?" the blonde asked, removing her hands from Ken's back and looking at him with amusement glittering in her eyes.

"Yeah, and, while you're at it, what's with the not sharing around of your bootlegged liquor?" Chris asked, snatching up the juice box in front of Ken and scrutinising the list of ingredients. "You know, I can't pronounce half of these preservatives. Maybe it _is _alcohol."

"M-missy?" Ken asked, his head still reeling. He put a hand to his forehead and actually felt his forehead under his palm. Normally, there was hair there unless he pushed it back beforehand. He ran a hand slowly backwards through his hair, and it felt different between his fingers. Thicker, softer and… _longer. _He froze, not even attempting to catch the sunglasses that had been resting on his head that he had dislodged clattering to the floor. What the hell was going on? How had he got here and why had his hair grown? When had he put sunglasses on. Why…?

Slowly, he reached down for the dropped sunglasses and brought them up to eye-level. Angling one of the dark lenses, he was able to just about catch a glimpse of himself in the smoky surface. What he saw made him drop the sunglasses again. He gasped, but then he was floating again and he wasn't sure if anyone had realised. He was floating, and he couldn't feel the seat under him or the plastic fork he had somehow had in his hand. He was floating again and floating and then suddenly _bam_. The tree was against his back again and his hand was in the sandy dirt and thin, itchy grass underneath the tree once more and he was staring at Bridget again, right across the quad.

His heart racing so hard that it hammered in his dry throat, he slowly pieced together what had happened. The reflection… he'd _been_ Bridget. He hadn't gone over there suddenly, he'd been inside Bridget. He'd left his own body and become Bridget, and then he was back here again. Being himself and not Bridget. He hoped. Quickly, he patted himself down, just to check that he was indeed back inside his own body.

He grinned again. Apparently, the ritual had worked after all.

_**Quiet Please, I'm Stalking**_

"You know, I still feel kind of weird…" Bridget commented, frowning into her mug. She wrapped her hands tighter around the steaming tea, contemplating it rather than the room around her. Since her odd experience — what was apparently a brief possession — earlier, she had felt dizzy, queasy and… _fragile_ somehow; not a feeling she was either used to or enjoyed. Tired and weak were not words frequently used in Bridget Vance's vocabulary. Not to describe herself, anyway.

"Well, if you were temporarily possessed like we think you were, most possessions damage the host's soul," Chris reasoned, shrugging sympathetically with one shoulder. "It's within reason that you don't feel so good right now. Just be thankful that whatever it was that possessed you didn't stay in you longer, or you'd really be suffering right about now."

Bridget huffed a sigh and put her mug down on the end table. Noticing Chris wince she looked back at it and realised that she had missed the coaster. Rolling her eyes at the fear his mother's anal retentiveness could instil in someone she shifted the mug. "Why are crisises like buses? We're going along happily without one and then suddenly we have two at once. How crazy is that?"

"Crises," Ben mumbled at her, manoeuvring around his screen. "It's crises."

Bridget screwed up her face. "You mean the fishy star sign?" she asked. "What's that got to do with this?"

"The fishy star sign would be _Pisces. Crises_, however, is the plural of—" he stopped and rolled his eyes. "You know what? Never mind." Getting into a grammatical debate with Bridget would be counter-productive, given the amount of unknown holes they still had to fill in whichever nefarious demonic plot that was being thrown at them this time. There wasn't time and correcting Bridget's scary grammatical constructions was not high on his list of priorities. He went back to his computer.

Bridget cocked an eyebrow in Ben's direction and shifted her body so that she was facing Nixa, not understanding at all what the witch was babbling on about. "So, Nixa, got anything yet?" She should have known better to ask Nixa when she was reading, though. The blonde only nodded vaguely and turned her page. This was why Ben and Chris tried their best to keep Nixa's hands off the research books. Instead of picking out anything useful from them, she ended up getting so deeply sucked in that she read them cover to cover. Granted, all of the information would be stored deep in the recesses of her abnormally brainy brain and could be plucked out later at will, but it was no good to them _now. _

The blonde groped blindly for her glass on the table next to her and brought it to her lips, taking a drink without stopping reading and then putting it back in the same manner. Her eyes squinted slightly at the edges as she got to the bottom of the page, where the light was slightly poorer.

Bridget began picking her nails, twisting her mouth in thought. She looked around the Halliwell's living room desperately for something — _any_thing — to do, but found nothing. Her forte wasn't here with the books and the researching. She couldn't crack police databases like Ben, and she didn't know The Book of Shadows inside out like Chris, nor could she suck up information like sponge-like Nixa. They were her friends' talents and traits. She just got pointed at what needed killing. Not that they didn't do their part when the killing came, but she was just the one that was _good_ at it. She sighed heavily, starting to feel guilty about her lack of action. Or maybe just restless.

Yeah, restless was probably a better word. Or bored. _Bored… _"You know, on Friday nights, some people do this thing called partying. They go out and say, 'Thank God the week's over'. I don't know if you guys have ever heard of it…" Nixa didn't reply, and Ben and Chris only grunted, but whether in agreement or disagreement she couldn't tell. She sighed again, this time louder. "Fine. Fine, fine, fine. Chris, I'm going to go and make some more tea. Okay?" She snatched her mug from the end table and walked out of the room.

Ben looked up from his computer at her retreating form. "Where's she going?"

_**Quiet Please, I'm Stalking**_

They would have a thick, prickly shrub planted right under their window, wouldn't they, Ken thought bitterly. Most people had a nice bed of flowers under their windows, but no. The Halliwell's had to have this ugly shrub… _thing _that was snagging his clothes and hair and making noises so loud every time he shifted that he was terrified that someone inside would hear them. They didn't, though. Even though he was peeking over the windowsill through the glass, they hadn't worked out that he was there. Ben and Chris had their backs to him on a couch, a lamp at either end casting a light over both of their activities, so there wasn't much fear of him being spotted by them.

Nixa was in an armchair at the other side of the room directly facing the window, and posed the most risk for spotting him, but she hadn't looked up from whatever she was reading for at least forty-five minutes, if not an hour. Bridget was sitting in the room's other armchair, facing the fireplace and side on to the window. He'd rather that she was sitting where Nixa was sitting, so he could get a better look at her, but beggars couldn't be choosers. Soon, he'd put his plan into motion. Soon. He just needed to bide a little more time.

_**Quiet Please, I'm Stalking**_

"Fine. Just pretend like I'm not there. It's not like I'm _important _or anything…" Bridget seethed, glaring angrily at the kettle and willing it to boil. She dumped a teabag in her mug at drummed her fingers on the counter, wishing that the gas flame was about a million degrees hotter so she could get this done. Anyway, who still boiled water on their hob? The Halliwells were the only family she could think of who didn't have an electric kettle. A throwback, perhaps, from how old their family was. Although, thinking about it, if it _was _a throwback then why did they insist on using gas? Given the persecution, flames should scare them, right?

Bridget drummed her fingers on the counter, her mouth set into a tight line. She sighed suddenly, releasing the tension in her features with a rush and running a hand through her hair, pushing it backwards tiredly. She still felt entirely washed out from the possession, and she was annoyed that its effects were lingering this long. The kettle hissed quietly to her on the hob.

Wyatt walked in from the dining room and was crossing the room towards the fridge when he spotted her. "Oh. Hey. Aren't you in the living room trying to find out which creepy old caretaker is behind the rubber mask?" he asked her, finishing his trip to the refrigerator and pulling it open with a sucking pop.

"Tea," Bridget murmured quietly, gesturing to the necessary paraphernalia for tea-making spread on the counter behind her. "I needed some tea. What about you? Shouldn't you be upstairs exposing yourself on webcam or something?"

"I was in such demand that the site's server crashed. It's not back up yet," Wyatt replied, leaning around the refrigerator and flashing a grin at her.

"Well, I guess I can see why if they all came to ogle the size of your _ego_," Bridget said, finally hearing a noise that could possibly sound like the beginnings of boiling coming from inside the kettle's metal stomach and turning back to it to see if it would do anything else. The noise stopped.

Wyatt merely wiggled his eyebrows back her and disappeared into the depths of the fridge. She rolled her eyes and began stabbing her teabag with her spoon out of boredom, sneaking glances at the kettle to check that it hadn't secretly boiled without her knowing it. It hadn't.

Wyatt slammed the fridge closed, clutching a carton of milk in one hand and a handful of carrot sticks in the other. "What's up with you, anyway?"

"What's up with your face?" Bridget shot back, a hint of anger in her voice. She looked him up and down, trying her best to be threatening through the haze that seemed to surround her brain.

Wyatt munched a carrot stick and tilted his head in concession. "Yeah. I guess I kind of had that one coming. But, seriously, how _fourth grade_ was that?"

"Does this have a point?" Bridget asked. "If so, please get to it before I beat you into a bloody pulp. Because afterwards it will be hard to get there, what with your jaw being wired shut and all."

Wyatt grinned at her again, putting the carton of milk down on the kitchen island and then picking a carrot stick out of the bundle in his hand and tapping it against the wooden surface, regarding her without dropping the grin until he saw the first signs that he was starting to creep her out, and his grin pulled even wider.

"I was entirely serious about the breaking of your face," Bridget reminded him, glaring at the Twice Blessed teenager stonily. "Don't think I won't do it."

"Sorry. It's just hard to work out exactly how many personalities you have. I mean, this is Bitch Bridget that we see most often, and yet there's also whiny Bridget—"

"—'Whiny'? Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let's slow this train down. Whiny? How am I whiny? When am I whiny? I _don't_ whine."

"'I'm booooooooored'," Wyatt mimicked. "'I'm booooooooooored. This is boooooooooring. Can I kill something yet?'."

"What? When! When have I ever said that? And when have I ever _sounded _like that? You're delusional. And now my kettle has boiled. Do you want to come over here so I can scald you or are you happy at that safe distance?" Receiving no reply she crossed to the island and turned off the gas, picked up the kettle and walked back to her mug. Once she had filled it she put the kettle back on the cold hob again. "Milk," Bridget demanded shortly, holding out her hand.

Wyatt looked down at the carton. "Oh. Right. I'm not done yet." He picked it up and brought it to his lips, taking a drink before holding it out to Bridget. "Okay. Now I'm done."

"EW! That is GROSS Wyatt! I don't want THAT in my tea!" Bridget shrieked, screwing up her face in disgust.

Wyatt shrugged. "Suit yourself." He picked up the carton again and resumed drinking.

Bridget looked down at her tea and wrinkled her nose. She wasn't going to drink this without milk. Sighing, she snatched the mug from the counter and stalked across the room to the sink to tip it away, kicking Wyatt in the shin on the way. The witch-whitelighter choked on the milk. He slammed the carton back down on the kitchen island and bent double, coughing, as milk dribbled down his nose.

"Oh, yeah, _that's _attractive," Bridget told him scornfully, tipping her tea down the drain. "Spewing milk out of your nose. How irresistible."

"Your fault!" Wyatt gasped, straightening up again. He looked down at his shirt, which was covered in milk and angrily wiped his face with his hand.

"I slipped," Bridget said innocently, crossing to the bin and throwing the teabag in. "Oops."

Wyatt sighed heavily and pulled a face at the mess on the floor. He snatched a tea towel from the kitchen island and finished wiping his face, and then dropped it onto the floor and began pushing it about the tiles with his foot, trying to dry up all of the milk.

"That's not going to do it, is it?" Bridget told him, turning around and snatching the dishcloth from behind the tap and running it under the faucet. "Here." She tossed the sodden cloth at him, purposefully having not wrung it out. It hit his back with a satisfying wet splat and slid down. "See? That helped, right?"

Wyatt caught it before it hit the floor. "Yeah. You're a regular helper elf," he muttered, looking at the cloth. He grinned at then threw it back at her chest.

Bridget squealed. "Wyatt! That's WET! Like, REALLY wet!" She snatched it off her chest and began shaking her top, trying to get rid of the water that had run down it.

"Oh, it's wet? I hadn't noticed."

Bridget narrowed her eyes at him. "Ha. Ha. Ha ha ha," she sniped, glaring. "You think you're so clever, don't you, with all of your stupid amazing powers and your dumb one-liners and… and, and, and your… BLONDE hair, don't you?"

Wyatt blinked, and then burst out laughing. "I'm not entirely sure what the correct response is to that. I mean, other than the obvious, 'No, I don't think I'm clever I know so' but eh. Predictability. I liked to be a little mysterious, you know? Chicks dig that."

"The only thing a 'chick' would dig around you is your _grave,_" Bridget shot back, throwing the dishcloth back at him.

Wyatt flicked a wrist and sent it flying back at her. "You know, speaking of predictability, a blind person would have been able to see that coming."

Bridget glared at him and threw the cloth down onto the floor. "Predictable? That's what you think? Huh." The Hunter stalked across the room and began toying with the mostly-empty carton of milk on the kitchen island, teasing the flap on the top between her finger and thumb and looking between it and Wyatt.

"I'm already covered in milk, Bridget. A little more won't hurt," he told her.

Bridget sighed. "Yeah. I guess you're right…" she said airily, twisting her mouth in thought and picking up the milk carton and walking around the island with it, pretending to read it's front. "But, you know, _I'm_ not the one doing the laundry, so—" She feinted with her right hand and pretended to throw the milk, and Wyatt raised a hand glowing blue with his shield on his left side just as Bridget snatched up a cupcake from a cooling rack and threw that at him. It hit his torso with another splat and slowly began to peel off, leaving a smear of brown chocolate icing as it did so. "See? You didn't see that coming, did you?"

Wyatt looked down at his shirt in surprise, and then back up at Bridget. "No," he said truthfully. I'll give you that one. But…" He quickly flicked a wrist and sent a telekinetic blast at the milk carton in Bridget's hand, spilling what remained in it all down her front.

"Bastard!" Bridget gasped, looking down at her soaked top. "This better come out!" She strode across the room and flicked the milk carton at Wyatt, spattering him with the drops left inside. "Now don't move. I've got to warm up or I'll pull something breaking your face and you're not worth that, pretty boy."

"Again with the pretty, huh?" Wyatt asked, poking his tongue in his cheek. "I've gotta say, I'm liking these compliments."

"Hold this," Bridget demanded shortly, thrusting the milk carton at his chest. "Gimme a second to stretch and—"

Wyatt looked at the milk carton, and then at her hand and paused long enough for Bridget to have to poke him with the carton to bring him back to his senses. In a daze he took the milk carton and just as she was about to turn away, he snatched her wrist and pulled her towards him, bending down and kissing her.

_**Quiet Please, I'm Stalking**_

Ben could feel his eyes prickling painfully and he swiped an impatient hand across them, trying to dispel the annoying feeling. The screen kept blurring in front of him, splitting into two screens sometimes. He sighed. At this rate, he was going to have to make an appointment to see his optometrist. Glasses. Great. As if he _needed _more reasons for people to make fun of him. The ticking on the grandfather clock against the wall just outside the living room's door was also not doing much to help him. The ticking was lulling him into a stupor, stealing his attention away from faithfully trawling Google and its millions of depraved website offspring for leads. He blinked again. The living room seem uncomfortably warm, which wasn't helping him any either. "Chris, would you mind turning the heat down a little please? I'm losing half of my bodyweight here."

"Sure. Hang on…" The witch-whitelighter shifted the Book of Shadows off his lap and got to his feet. "Whoa…" Chris moaned, suddenly bending double as a complete head rush overwhelmed him. He staggered backwards a couple of steps still bent over.

"Are you okay?" Nixa asked, finally being pulled from her book. "What's wrong?" She got up and placed a steadying hand on his arm as he threatened to crash to the floor.

'_I don't… know. I feel… weird. I don't know. Dizzy and kind of… not me. Gimme a minute and it'll pass. Ignore me. I guess I got up too fast…'_

He suddenly realised that what he had said hadn't actually come out of his mouth, just died inside his head. He tried to blink in shock but found that he couldn't control his eyelids. Panicking and feeling as if his eyes should be widening he tried to make a fist, but his hand didn't move. Instead, he felt the corners of his mouth slide upwards into a feral grin.

"I'm fine," he heard himself say. It chilled him. Someone or something else was using his mouth and vocal cords, stealing his voice. Then, when the creepiness factor was done with, he just got mad. How dare someone invade _his _body like this?

'_Whoever you are, you have three seconds to get out of my head before my friends realise that I'm not me and vanquish your sorry ass. Tick. Tock,' _he threatened, wondering if this was even the kind of possession where the possessor could hear you. He hoped so. This way, he could piss the perpetrator off and make him slip up.

'_Shut up, Ben. I'll just stand here and grin at them moronically and they'll never know the difference.'_

In his head, Chris began to laugh. He heard whatever was sharing his body growl in frustration, and his own lip curled into a snarl, which just made him laugh harder.

'_What are you laughing at? I don't think this is funny. I have possession of your body, _loser_, and can make you do anything I want. So _don't_ piss me off.'_

'_You wanted Ben? Wow. Your aim really sucks, doesn't it?' _Chris asked, laughter still evident in his voice. _'What kind of lame ass demonic force are you, anyway?'_

He felt his eyes narrow and he reached up to touch his face. His features contorted into a frown and his body walked over to the mirror above the fireplace. In his head, his laughter doubled as he saw his own mouth fall open in shock.

"Chris, are you okay?" Nixa asked again, putting a hand on his shoulder.

The witch's body span around so fast that he made himself dizzy. Swaying slightly, he felt himself nod to appease Nixa. "I'm okay you don't need to worry. I'm just… tired and… stuff. That's all. Sleepy. Yeah."

'_Smooth,' _Chris bit out sarcastically_. 'She won't know that I'm not me at all…"_

'_For God's sake, shut up. I'm trying to think. Oh, and they're not going to know that it's not you. I've just got to sit here and pout and look like a poor, kicked puppy and they'll have no idea I'm inside you.'_

'_Um, okay, ouch,' _Chris replied, physically smarting from that particular blow. That was kind of harsh and unnecessary and… completely untrue on top of it all. He paused, waiting to see what the force controlling his body would try next. Chris knew that anything that he 'said' or thought would give the force clues as to what he, Chris, would do in the situation and allow whatever it was that was possessing him to blend in more thoroughly and escape his friends' detection. He couldn't let that happen.

"Well, this isn't actually easy on us. I'm with you there," Nixa assured him, sliding her hand of his shoulder and smiling at him. "But we'll crack it soon. We always manage to one way or another, right?"

Chris could feel his body relax. It had been tensed with worry but now it relaxed, apparently having got past Nixa's observations. Well, fine. Wyatt was in the house. As were two of his cousins and there was no way that whatever this was could fake it past Ben, his best friend since the first grade. There would be slip-ups and then a vanquishing, and they could scrub one problem off their list. All that they would have to deal with then would be Ken.

"Where's Bridget?" Chris's voice asked, looking around the room for her. "She was here like, two seconds ago. Where did she go?"

"She went to the kitchen. I think…" Ben paused, frowning. "Or… the bathroom? I don't know. Whoops. I feel kind of bad, actually. I didn't even notice her leave…"

Chris felt his lips curl into a snarl again and his hands bunch into fists at his sides. He glared at Ben, not entirely sure why such hatred was being felt for his best friend. He could actually feel some of his possessor's rage spilling over into his body, that was how intense the fury burnt, and he had no idea why his body was being pumped full of this emotion.

'_Wow. Why would you want to possess Ben if you hate him this much? Surely that wouldn't have been a very comfortable ride for you…' _Chris observed casually, treading carefully. Gentle questioning might make the possessor reveal his plans to him.

'_So I could make him jump off a high rise building?' _his possessor duhed back at him. _'I don't know. I didn't really have a plan. I just wanted him out of the way. And now I see that I was right. He doesn't care about Bridget at _all._ They were in the same room together and she left and he doesn't even know where she is. Seriously. What a bastard.'_

'_Well, Ben _was_ busy, you know. Trying to ID you so we could kill you before you possessed someone again. I guess that plan kind of failed, but you know. You can't have it all. And, as for Ben not caring about Bridget, he does. Trust me. They bicker _constantly_ but they're best friends. He cares. Also, you know, he doesn't need to worry that Bridget isn't in the same room with him. Bridget can take care of herself. It's not like she went down to the Underworld by herself or anything. She just left the room and he's not obsessed enough with her to—' _Realisation hit Chris and he broke off suddenly, sparks suddenly having shot through his brain as everything clicked together. _'Ken! This is you, isn't it? How… Why!'_

'_Yeah. Fine. It's me. Not so wimpy and pathetic now, am I? What do you think of me now I have these powers, huh? Someone you'd hang around with instead of just some loser freshman?'_

"It could be possession, I guess, right Chris?" Ben asked, drumming his fingers idly on his laptop and twisting his mouth in thought. "That kind of makes sense, doesn't it? It fits… roughly. If you hammer the pieces into place…"

"Huh? What?" Ken asked, using Chris's voice, not having heard anything that Ben had been saying because he'd been arguing with Chris. "Sorry. I, um… spaced. What?"

"Possession…" Ben said slowly, cocking an eyebrow at Ken/Chris. "Possession as a theory? Remember? We went over this like five minutes ago." The witch narrowed his eyes at Ken/Chris and cocked his head slightly, silently considering something.

"Possession? What do you mean, possession? Who's possessed?" Chris heard himself ask, his voice panicky and high-pitched. Ken had missed Ben's searching look or didn't know the significance of it and had just carried on regardless and Chris felt hope bubble up inside him. He knew that Ken wouldn't be able to fake it past Ben. He had known all along. And now Ben was on to Ken.

'_Congratulations. I really didn't think anyone could be a worse me than I am,' _Chris told Ken with wry, sarcastic amusement. _'If I had control of my hands and stuff, I'd totally be giving you a slow clap right about now.'_

'_Quit with the sarcasm! You are _damn _distracting, you know that, right?' _Ken snapped back, still sounding panicky and nervous even when using his own voice. He seemed unsure of his footing and Chris could tell that Ken hadn't lied earlier — he _didn't _have a plan. He had no idea what to do now he was inside someone.

'_I am to please,' _Chris shot back, trying to bug Ken as much as possible so that the freshman would cause his body to do something completely irrational.

"Ken…?" Nixa tried slowly, looking Ken/Chris in the eyes. "We think Ken could be possessed demonically? We've been brainstorming for… _ever, _Chris. Are you _sure_ you're okay?"

"Right! Ken! Sorry. Why do you think he's possessed?" Ken/Chris asked, trying desperately to get a hold on the situation and the conversation without any previous knowledge of what had been going on in the living room other than what he had viewed through the window.

"Well… Demonic possession can often give mortals powers, right?" Nixa asked. "I think I read that somewhere."

"And… hey," Ben said, his face lighting up into a grin. He closed his laptop and shifted it off his lap. "How about this theory? What if we're not looking for two separate big bads? What if whatever was possessing Ken is what possessed Bridget?" He grabbed the Book from where Chris had left it and heaved it onto his knees, listlessly and half-heartedly flicking through the pages.

'_Or Ken isn't possessed, he's just been a total idiot and messing with the dark arts and _he's _the one that possessed Bridget,' _Chris said evenly.

'_Idiot, huh? Well, you're possessed by an idiot. What does that make you?' _Ken asked smugly.

'_Give me a minute to do the math… Oh, wait, yeah. There it is. Surprisingly, still not an idiot.'_

'_Oh, whatever Chris. Shut up. Seriously. Just SHUT UP!'_

A pain like a sledgehammer hitting his temple suddenly sent Chris's brain reeling and he cried out inside his head, but the sound just echoed and died inside his skull. Chris could feel the pain but Ken couldn't, the witch-whitelighter came to realise as he came back to his senses from the force of the blow.

'_Hey, cool, I can smack you around inside your own head! This power rocks.'_

'_One more chance before my friends get my mom and aunts up here to send you blazing on your merry way down to the Wasteland. Don't think we won't do it just because you're a mortal. Now get. Out. Of me.' _The pain was back again and Chris cried out inside his head again, his exterior only registering blankness and giving no indication of the turmoil that was happening inside.

Ben leaned forward onto the Book of Shadows, narrowing his eyes in Ken/Chris's direction. "Chris…" he asked slowly, his forehead creasing into a frown. "What's my middle name?"

'_James,' _Chris blurted out immediately inside his head. _'Dammit. No, it's not James. Seriously. It's Thomas. Honestly.'_

'_If you're this dumb all of the time, I'm surprised no demons have killed you already,' Ken sneered._

"James," Ken/Chris said confidently.

"Huh…" Ben said, giving a light shrug. "Sorry. I just thought that the possession demon had caught up with you too. Don't worry about it." He picked up the Book of Shadows and began pacing the room with it, flipping pages and dodging furniture. "So… Chris…" the witch mused whilst standing behind him. He pointed at a page in the Book. "What do you think?"

Just as Ken/Chris turned around, Ben closed the Book and hit Ken/Chris on the forehead with the spine, sending his best friend staggering backwards into an end table topped with a lamp. Grasping for support at the table, Ken/Chris knocked the lamp over which fell to the floor and shattered in a spray of sparks.

_**Quiet Please, I'm Stalking**_

"Hey! Whoa! Whoa. Hey. What… what… Huh?" Bridget panted, pushing him away and staggering backwards towards the kitchen island. Her hands groped for the edge blindly and when she found it she clung on for dear life. "What was _that _about?"

Wyatt shrugged, suddenly not able to meet her eyes. He looked down at the milk carton and cleared his throat, dropping it onto the floor to his left. "I… don't know. Just wondered if we'd, you know, done it properly in the closet. Because something tells me you really weren't giving your one hundred per cent that day." As he finished his sentence his confidence came back along with the amused glitter in his blue eyes and the smirk on his lips.

"You want a hundred per cent?" Bridget asked, lessening her grip on the island. She sniffed. "Trust me. You couldn't handle a hundred per cent of me."

"Oh yeah?" Wyatt asked.

"Yeah."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Yeah?"

"Yes!" Bridget shrieked in annoyance, the pattern getting to her. She grabbed his sodden t-shirt and jerked him down to her level, kissing him with all of the force she could muster just so he would shut _up. _Taking the lead she began pushing him backwards, not able to see where she was going because he, being a lot taller than her, blocked her entire view of the kitchen. Still, she wasn't surprised when they slammed backwards into the fridge, scattering magnets and memos and the shopping list all over the kitchen tiles.

Wyatt broke apart from her by standing upright. "Okay. Ow. Big ow. How rough do you want to be? Gotta say, this is not a turn on for me."

"You wanted a hundred per cent," Bridget told him with a shrug. "And liar."

Wyatt gave a one shouldered shrug. "Yeah. I'm that transparent, huh?"

"As glass," Bridget informed him.

"Glad we got that cleared up," he replied, grinning at her and then kissing her again. She tilted her head and a light breath whispered from her mouth as he was kissing her, and then she hitched in a breath again when he moved down and began kissing her exposed throat. Her hands were interlaced around his neck and he could feel them trembling slightly as he clumsily missed her mouth and kissed her chin, before claiming her bottom lip once more and then her entire mouth.

"Hey, hey, hey," she said breathlessly, breaking away from him and gulping. "I never told you that you could drive." She grabbed his shirt again with one hand and used the other to bend his head down to her height and began kissing him.

"What the hell is this?" Wyatt asked, looking into her face.

"I… I don't know," Bridget replied, swallowing again. "But you started it. And I don't back away from a challenge." As one they stumbled backwards into the breakfast nook and fell onto the kitchen table, scattering the fruit bowl and the various bags and school paraphernalia that had been left here by the Halliwell children's homecoming. A loud crash sounded and they both jerked upwards with wide eyes, looking towards the door.

"What was that?" Bridget asked.

"How much do you care?" Wyatt asked, looking back at her.

"Gotta admit; not much."

"So we're gonna get back to our little bit of fun?" Wyatt asked.

"Wait, this is 'our little bit of fun'?" Bridget demanded, pushing him back a little bit and looking at him quizzically, a smile beginning to fade on her face. "What do you mean by that? 'Our little but of fun'. Like it's just for us and we can't tell anybody?" She paused and her eyes widened and she shoved Wyatt angrily, pushing him back onto the table and propelling herself back out into the room. "Are you… _ashamed _or something? Am I not tall or blonde or lithe or big-breasted enough to have made out with Wyatt Halliwell?"

Wyatt rubbed his chest were she had shoved him absently as he sat up and looked at her oddly. "Bridget… Huh? What… _where _is all of this coming from? Which corner of your tiny little mind did you dredge that up from?" he asked, narrowing his eyes, trying to determine if she was for real. Someone cried out on the other side of the house, and he heard wood splintering.

"Uh, the part that's _mortified _that I've just spent ten minutes with my tongue in your mouth!" Bridger spat. "I… I can't _believe _you!" She spun around and paced back into the kitchen, throwing her hands into the air. "And _tiny? _So I'm dumb, too, is that it? I'm dumb and not good enough for you? I just… ARGH. I don't know what I was _thinking,_ except that you kissed me and then—"

"There's nothing _wrong _with you, Bridget!" Wyatt yelled at her when she paused for breath, cutting the Hunter off. "Why the hell do you think that I've said there is?"

"I… I don't," Bridget eventually admitted, even as her face darkened. She sighed, running a hand through her increasingly-tatty-looking hair and wished that she'd tied it up after all. "I'm such a dumb slut and I'm ashamed of myself. That's all. It's not you, it's just…" She sighed. "I don't know. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry for kissing you, just… sorry. I'm throwing myself at you and it's sad and pathetic and I don't even know why and no one is going to like it, either. Just bad move on my part. I don't know what I was thinking. I don't think I feel about you... _that _way, and yet... Sorry."

Wyatt slid off the table and onto one of the kitchen chairs that had been kicked out from the table when they'd landed on it and regarded her quizzically, trying to shove the smashing and crashing he was hearing from his mind, just so he could get what was happening straight in his head. "I… don't get it. What's wrong?"

Bridget opened her mouth to answer when a loud shattering sound followed by a dull double thud burst through the house, and they both whipped their heads around to stare at the kitchen door. "It doesn't matter. We've got to go and deal with that." She spun on her heel and slammed her hand on the dining room's swing door, feeling Wyatt's presence just behind her and trying to forget that it was there.

_**Quiet Please, I'm Stalking**_

Ben hissed apologetically. "Sorry, Chris. That really is gonna hurt in the morning…"

"BEN!" Nixa shouted shrilly, her eyes wide with disbelief. She grabbed his arms and then snatched the Book of Shadows from them, flinging it down onto an armchair. "What the hell has gotten into you!"

"'Into me'?" Ben echoed with a laugh. "It's not me that we should be worrying about. That's not Chris," he told her simply, shrugging. "That is someone walking around using Chris's body. Only Chris knows my middle name and it is definitely _not _James. I wish it was, but it's something entirely more embarassing."

"Possessed?" Nixa said uncertainly, watching Chris clutch at his head in pain. "Please tell me you're sure."

Ken/Chris suddenly sprang up from the floor at Ben, tackling the witch to the ground and punching him hard across the face with first his left fist, then his right, tossing Ben's head both sides. He readied his fist again but Ben pushed up from the floor with his feet and hands and sprang into a backwards roll, kicking Ken/Chris between his shoulder blades and sending him flying to land on the other side of the room.

"Oh, I'm sure," Ben told her sarcastically, putting two fingers inside his mouth and finding them stained red with blood. "Son of a bitch…" He accepted Nixa's hand up from the floor and turned around to face Ken/Chris, but he wasn't on the floor anymore, he was hurtling back towards him.

Nixa stepped in front of Ben and kicked out at Ken/Chris's abdomen, watching him hurtle backwards into the sofa, tipping it over. As Ken/Chris disappeared behind it, Nixa put a hand over her mouth and winced. "Oh, God. I can't do this. I can't hurt _Chris_, even if whatever is in him has sent him all types of crazy."

Orbing lights suddenly glowed from behind the couch, disappearing into the air. Nixa and Ben backed closer to each other, surveying the room for any hint or orbing lights that were going to betray Ken/Chris's next position. Suddenly, in front of them, orbing lights began coalescing into one.

Ken/Chris appeared on top of the end table that he'd knocked the lamp off earlier. Splintering sounds filled the air and the three occupants of the room looked down at the glass top, which was rapidly spider-webbing like thin ice under the witch-whitelighter's weight. Suddenly, Ken/Chris plunged through with a deafening smashing noise and became wedged in the metal frame. "Huh. This transporting thing isn't the easiest thing to control, you know," he informed them casually, looking down at his hands. "How about the telekinesis thing?" He waved an arm and Nixa was thrown off her feet and backwards into the mirror above the fireplace, shattering it. She fell onto the marble hearth hard, glass raining down around her. "Better. Much better," Ken/Chris observed, smiling at his outstretched arm. "Point and shoot. Any idiot can do this."

"Nixa, are you okay?" Ben asked, skirting around the wedged Ken/Chris. He was halfway to the fireplace when he was jerked backwards and across the room. He hit the wall and bounced down onto a table, which collapsed under his weight sending him crashing to the floor. Hissing in pain he rolled onto the rug and lifted up his t-shirt. Shards of the vase he had landed on where lodged in his side though thankfully, due to his ribcage, not particularly deeply and he was able to brush most of them out. They still took skin and blood with them, though and he winced again.

Orbing lights appeared in the middle of the room and Ben and Nixa both turned towards them and started to get up. Xander, Paige's son, had orbed in with his cousin Prue into the middle of the chaos and Ken/Chris turned towards them, sneering at the sudden intrusion.

"Guys, what's going on?" Xander asked, looking around at the wreckage.

"Yeah. What with all of the smashing and the crashing, we figured that there was, like, probably something up," Prue continued, looking at the floored Ben and Nixa and then at Ken/Chris. "Chris, what's going on? Demon? Warlock? Where did he go?"

"Get down!" Ben yelled hastily as Ken/Chris raised an arm.

"What?" Prue asked, turning to him and cocking an eyebrow. "Why?"

"NOW!" Ben shouted, flicking a wrist and sending a wave of icing surfing across the rug to the two teenager's feet, tripping them both over forwards just as Ken/Chris released another blast of telekinesis that missed his cousins and threw the couch back into the recess of the bay window, upsetting the pot plants on the windowsill. They fell to the floor and shattered.

"What the hell is going on?" Xander gasped, struggling to draw air into his lungs. The fall at winded him. "What's up with Chris?"

"It's more like what's got _into _him," Ben told him, finally climbing to his feet. Warm blood trickled down his side and he could feel it being absorbed by and turning cool in the waistband of his boxer shorts. He grimaced, touching the bloody sites gingerly and then pulling a face at the red on his fingers.

"Possession?" Prue asked, eyeing Ken/Chris struggling to free himself from the table's iron frame and slowly getting up, never taking her eyes off him. She kept low, her eyes narrowed, ready to fling herself back on the floor should Ken/Chris attack again.

"You got it," Nixa told her grimly, trying to comb the shards of mirror out of her hair without turning her fingers into stumps. It was harder than it sounded.

Ken/Chris suddenly orbed out again and what was left of the table fell over of its own accord. Immediately, everyone in the room stiffened again, observing each space for signs or orbing lights. Suddenly, orbing lights appeared behind Xander and Prue. Nixa and Ben barely had time to yell out a warning before Ken/Chris had waved an arm and sent Xander flying backwards out of the door and into the centre parlour, where he landed on and annihilated the coffee table.

Prue spun and came with in centimetres of kicking Ken/Chris in the face when she paused. "I can't do it. I can't kick Chris. He's still in there somewhere."

"Wrong move," Ken/Chris informed her cruelly, grabbing her leg and turning, throwing her as hard as he could into the piano. She grunted as the air left her body and a discordant jarring of notes filled the air as she slid down the side and lay slumped against it, unconscious.

Ben flicked his wrists and ice began encasing itself around Ken/Chris's feet, winding its way up to his knees. Growling, Ken/Chris looked up at Ben and such an expression of hatred creased Ken/Chris's features that Ben's eyes widened and he paused, never having seen Chris look at _any_body like that, let alone him. In this time, Ken/Chris orbed out again, leaving the ice that had been around his legs to crumble.

"Shit!" Ben stamped his foot in annoyance, chewing on a nail. He was getting tired of this game. Waiting for Ken/Chris to appear in a certain place and then trying to stop him only to have him orb away again. They couldn't fight like this. It was impossible. Suddenly, he was lifted off his feet and slammed into the ceiling and then left to drop to the floor. Pain that felt like an axe had just been driven between several of his ribs caused him to gasp out and then screw up his face when the breathing hurt.

"Hey!" Nixa yelled, jumping over Ben and kicking Ken/Chris in the chest, and then once in the face. Ken/Chris staggered backwards, clutching at his nose. Blood began pouring from his nose underneath his clenched hands and when he removed them it trickled down his face and over his lip. "Back. Off." Nixa snarled, balling her fists. "You want someone to take it out on? Do me. Not only can I kick your ass eight ways before you can blink, I've also got the whole super healing thing going on. So bring it."

Ken/Chris looked at her and laughed. She jumped into the air and spun, but Ken/Chris threw out his arm and blasted her backwards into the closed door to the sunroom. She crashed through it in a deafening shattering of glass and splintering of wood, knocking the door off its hinges and out of its frame and disappearing out of the room.

"Nixa!" Xander yelled, just limping back into the living room as Nixa was blasted out of it.

Ben kicked Ken/Chris's legs out from under him and dragged himself up using an armchair. "Xander, hold him off for a minute. Do whatever. I've got to see if she's okay." Finally managing to find a method of breathing that was deep enough so that he wasn't suffocating but shallow enough so that his ribs didn't scream at him, he made his way across the room to the wreckage of the sunroom door.

"I can freeze and orb! Pick a tactic you think might work with those two powers!" Xander yelled after Ben desperately as Ken/Chris began getting to his feet. Ben didn't reply, slipping through into the sunroom as Xander disappeared into a cloud of orbs. He reappeared behind Ken/Chris and kicked the witch-whitelighter in the back.

Ken/Chris turned and raised an arm but Xander dropped into a roll and managed to kick his cousin's stomach from his position on the floor. Ken/Chris doubled over and Xander orbed out, reappearing by the fireplace. Looking around wildly he jumped up and snatched a framed photograph from the mantelpiece and threw it at Ken/Chris. Ken/Chris waved at arm and sent it back at him, but his cousin froze it in midair.

"What is it with these damn people and interfering!" Ken/Chris growled, waving an arm and sending Xander crashing into the shattered mirror above the fireplace and then skidding across the floor, smashing into an end table and snapping the legs off and causing the contents to rain down on him.

Ken/Chris stalked into the sunroom through the broken door and found Ben crouching over Nixa. He punched the witch in the face, sending him crashing onto his back, and then waved an arm and threw his best friend into the wall and then down onto a wicker shelf full of potted plants. Ben fell through the flimsy shelving unit, taking the pot plants with him. The air was filled with the dull thuds of spilled soil and the smashing of ceramic breaking on the tiled floor.

"What the hell is going on out here!" Wyatt demanded, running through the dining room with his eyes wide in panic.

"Oh, NOW you choose to come out!" Ben snapped sarcastically at the emerging Wyatt and Bridget. "Thanks for the much-needed hand earlier, guys!"

"We… we didn't hear. You. The… the stuff," Bridget told him distractedly, smoothing her hair. "What the hell happened to the door? And Nixa?"

"Me," Ken/Chris snarled, waving an arm and throwing Bridget and Wyatt into the dining room wall. They both slid to the floor groaning in pain. "Now stay out of my way." He looked down at Ben, who was struggling to get up with nothing to use to pull himself to his feet. Ken/Chris grinned and grabbed Ben's t-shirt, slamming the witch back against the wall.

Ben cried out in pain, his ribs searing. The axe was driving itself deeper and deeper with every movement. "What the hell are you doing this for?" he hissed at Ken/Chris, swallowing hard.

Ken/Chris slammed Ben back into the wall, harder this time. "You'll see," he told Ben, ramming Ben backwards into the wall so hard a picture fell to the floor and shattered, the sound completely masked by Ben's cry of pain. "Trust me. You'll see." Ken/Chris orbed out of the sunroom, dragging Ben along with him.

**_Quiet Please, I'm Stalking_**

**Firstly, I knew this took a while, but I broke the fifteenth page. Whoops. I didn't mean for that to happen, it's just that so much needed to go on. And now it has. Heh. I hope you enjoyed all of that. And my laptop blew up also. Joy of joys for that dying on me completely, so I had to rewrite and re-edit quite a bit of this to get it to you. Gr.**

**Anyway, thanks so much for your reviews. Especially the anonymous reviwers who I can't reply to. THANK YOU! You do such a good job with my morale, seriously. **

**_Twisted Flame_**


	9. Chapter 9

A push in the small of his back dropped Ben the floor, landing on his hands and knees at the last minute in an attempt to save his ribs from anymore damage. The room was dark, but a little light spilled in through a chink in the curtains and he was able to make out carpet under his hands and the usual furniture one would think synonymous of a bedroom. He seemed to be in the middle of a large ring of candles and next to a skull led in the middle. The circle was broken, however, as Chris's orbing power had landed him on one of the candles, squashing and breaking it.

"Where are we?" Ben asked, gently turning himself so that he was sitting down and looking up at Ken/Chris. "For a demonic lair, this looks pretty comfortable, you know? How many trips to Ikea did this take?"

Ken/Chris didn't answer, instead choosing to walk over to the bed, supporting someone's limp form. Frowning, Ben wrapped his arms around his knees and watched the two figures' progress. He had thought that, for a fraction of a second, they'd appeared outside but couldn't be sure. And, even if they had, it had probably been due to the lack of control Chris's possessor had on his best friend's power. Ben had never considered that they could have been picking someone extra up.

Although the control of Chris's power seemed to have advanced enough to land them in the room they were meant to be in. Obviously not in the correct place in that room, as the broken candle suggested, but the same room nonetheless.

"So, who have we brought along on this journey? I hope it's not someone that gets travel sick. Because that won't be a fun ride for any of us." Again, the witch got no reply and he twisted his mouth in thought, watching the figure that was the body of his best friend moving over towards the door. Suddenly, the overhead light snapped on, almost blindingly bright after the relative darkness of the room before. Ben had to screw his eyes closed against the stabbing pains in his retinas, but was forced to open them again when he heard a body crumpling to the floor. He opened his eyes a narrow slit and, seeing Chris lying prone on the carpet, quickly crawled over the perimeter of candles to the witch-whitelighter.

The bedsprings squeaked and Ben looked up, just in time to see someone swinging themselves off the bed and kicking upwards, catching him under the chin and throwing him backwards onto the floor to slam down onto his injured ribs.

"Huh. Looks like Chris couldn't quite take all of that. What a wuss, huh?"

Ben groaned and took a minute to get up, and then shifted himself into a sitting position. The witch touched his nose gingerly with the back of his hand, trying to stem the blood flow. He looked up from the crimson puddle pooling on his hand and his mouth fell open in shock when he saw who was standing there. "Ken! You… this… Ken! How…?" He exhaled tiredly, shaking his head and snorting the red snake of blood back up his nose. It slithered down the back of his throat, choking him slightly with the burning tang of copper.

"Surprised? You thought I'd be this big bad scary demon, didn't you, Ben? You thought that I had to be this powerful dark force in order to defeat you all. And… and—" He suddenly burst out laughing throwing his head back. The moonlight slicing through the curtains flashed on his eyes and all Ben saw was pitch back and a maniacal gleam. He stopped laughing finally with a huge sigh, never dropping the grin from his face. "And you were wrong. Because look. Here I am." He thumped his chest and then spread his arms wide. "Me. Ken. The loser freshman with two captured witches."

Ben looked up at him, a small sad smile tweaking at the corners of his mouth. "Ken… look. Look at yourself. What have you done to yourself?"

Ken shrugged and got off the bed and began pacing the room. "A ritual. Or two. Got myself a couple of powers. Survival of the fittest and all of that jazz, right? You were fitter than me, with your magic, so I evened the score. You can't blame me."

Ben's eyes alighted on the broken circle of candles again and understanding flickered across his face. "Aaaah… I did wonder what all of the spooky mojo there on the floor was. Kinda cool. You know, in a freaky, you've given over your body and all of its energy to the black arts kind of way."

"Yeah, well—" Ken stopped, grinned, and shook his head, wagging his finger at Ben. "You know, Olsen, you were engaging me in conversation there, weren't you? Trying to distract me from kicking your sorry ass? Nice. Clever. Not clever enough, though." Throwing out a hand, he sent an energy blast at Ben that sent the witch crashing into the wall above his bed. Ben fell and slammed face-first into Ken's mattress and lay there without moving. "What? That was easy…" Ken whined, glaring at Ben's limp body. "That's all I get from you?" He began swaggering deliberately towards Ben.

"Not quite," Ben snarled, springing up and flicking his own wrist and sending a ball of ice flying at Ken, smacking the freshman dead in the chest and crashing him backwards into his dresser. The TV on top of it fell to the floor and shattered in a loud spray of sparks and coils of wreathing smoke.

He cried out in pain as he got off the bed, his face pulled taut, and limped to the bedroom door. Throwing it open he staggered out into the pitch-dark hallway. Scrambling along the wall with his hands, he felt his way along the corridor. Ahead of him, he could just make out where it opened up into a bigger room as the dim light spilled in through the windows.

As the room opened up, he could see a large kitchen separated from the rest of the place by a tall breakfast bar with stools drawn up to it occupied the space to the left. Above the sink, there was a large picture window letting in the majority of the light that was allowing him to see, albeit fuzzily. To his right a fairly large, round table sat, with chairs around it like sentinels. The light from a pair of French windows leading out onto a small balcony glimmered on the polished tabletop and on the vase of the tabletop's floral centrepiece.

Dead in front of him Ben saw a door, and that was what he made for, groping blindly for anything that might be in his way. Still, his knee collided with an end table and knocked something over that bounced on the carpet. Reaching down for it, he felt a fabric shade and his fingers fumbled for a switch. He had just flicked it on and a comparably blinding beam projected itself strongly onto the wall and all around the apartment, bouncing off things and casting weird shadows because of its angle.

His eyes had barely adjusted to the light when it was snuffed out again by a flying figure tackling him to the ground. He hit the floor — again — hard and Ken landed on top of him, equally hard and he could have sworn he heard his ribcage emit a sickening crunch.

"Don't leave. Stay. We have so much to talk about," Ken growled.

"Oh, I am _so_ not qualified to talk about you," Ben gasped out. "If I were, I'd be wearing a white coat and be packing about a million elephant tranqs. Well, you know what they say: You live and learn."

"Screw you, Ben. I'm not nuts. Not the way you'd like to think so."

"Mild profanities, huh?" Ben asked with a grin. "Is that all you got or can I worm my way any further under your skin? No, no, no. Don't tell me. Let me figure it out. It's more fun this way."

"Better? You want better? Fine. FUCK YOU, BEN OLSEN. Better?"

Ben pretended to consider, and then nodded a half-hearted 'yes'. "Yeah, I guess. I mean, we're lacking on the originality a little there but nice. Good. But… would you kiss your mother with that mouth? Seriously?"

"'Would you kiss your mother with that mouth?'," Ken mimicked cruelly. "No. Probably not. But will you kiss my fist with _your _mouth?"

"Wha—"

Ken punched Ben as hard as he knew how across the face, watching the witch's head snap to the side. "That's for kissing Bridget!"

Ben spat out some blood. "Ah. Okay. Clever pun, with your fist kissing my face. I didn't get that right off the bat. You're good, kid." He paused, and then a horrified look crossed his features. "Whoa. Whoa. WHOA. _I _kissed _Bridget! _Wh— huh? WHEN!"

"Don't deny it now because I'm about to turn your face into a pulp," Ken sneered. "I saw you both in your car. You kissed."

Ben laughed. "Wow. You know… wow. I was actually just joking about the whole men in white coats thing before but now… wow. You need to get fitted for a straitjacket because cuckoo! You've gone _nuts. _Bridget and I, we've never— OH. Wait. No. Yeah… Firstly, okay, that was a one time, never-before-happened event that will _never _happen again as long as we both live. Secondly, Bridget kissed _me. _I didn't kiss her. And it wasn't a meaningful kiss. She was trying to get these freaky dreams out of her head. Or something. It wasn't… I… nothing. It meant nothing. To either of us."

"You're babbling, Ben…" Ken warned in a singsong voice. "Is that because you're lying?"

Ben twisted his mouth in thought. "No, I'm pretty sure it's because I'm two steps away from being delirious because you're _sitting _on my several hundred _broken ribs_," the witch snarled, trying to sound threatening but his voice was small and wouldn't cooperate with him, cracking under the pain. Ken punched Ben again and the witch cursed, spitting more blood. "I'M TELLING THE TRUTH, MORON!"

"Sure?"

Ben huffed a frustrated sigh. "Ken… Look. Please. Up your meds, okay? I'm not in a relationship with Bridget. I'm not… please, for God's sake, get off me. This hurts like _hell_."

"So now do you know how I feel _every day _not being able to be with Bridget? Huh? Do you GET IT NOW!" Ken screamed, stabbing an accusing finger at Ben. "You've got no idea what I've been through for her and she doesn't even _like _me? And, and, and it _can't _be my fault. She can't _not_ like me. She has to so… so it must be you."

"Well, we'll ask her when she arrives with her freshly sharpened weapons, shall we? Yeah, I think that will be a good idea. Perhaps she'll leave your voice box long enough for you to tell her how it's _my _fault she doesn't love you."

Ken scoffed. "They don't know where we are. And, even if they did, it's going to take them some time to get here. We can have plenty of fun in between now and then. Don't you think?"

Ben began laughing. It hurt and every laugh seemed to grind parts of his ribcage together in new and torturous ways, but even that couldn't stop him. "Ken…" he gasped, swallowing the sniggers in an attempt to talk to the freshman. "Ken, we're witches. Do you really, _really _think we can't be found in a heartbeat?"

"You and Chris are here, though, and you said Nixa and Bridget—"

"—aren't witches? Yeah. They're not. But… you've left pretty much the entire Halliwell clan pissed at you by taking one of their own. Do you know how many witches there are there to find us and come and get us? Shall I tell you? Phoebe, Piper, Paige… Three. Wyatt: four. Xander, Patience and Prue… Seven? OH. Paige's husband. Half-witch. Eight. And, while we're counting this thing… I have three brothers. So eleven. That's potentially eleven witches looking for us. Do you really think they're not going to be here any second?"

"What…?" Ken trailed off, clambering off Ben and looking distantly at the wall. His muscles all ached as if there were ablaze and even he couldn't deny the fact that he was trembling. And hot… He ran a hand over his forehead. He was burning up, which explained the beads of sweat rolling down the side of his face despite the fact that he'd cranked the AC up to its highest possible setting. He didn't know if he could do the ritual again. Not… His resolve hardened. Eleven witches. He only had the energy blasting power, really. The possession thing wasn't going to do much good at all when it came down to it. So he had to do it again. Simple.

"What's the matter?" Ben asked, smirking. "Realised what you've got yourself into?"

Ken twisted his face into a loathing sneer and grabbed Ben's t-shirt, trying to heave the witch up of the ground. The pressure this caused on the back of his ribcage threw dizzying stars into Ben's vision and he held up his hands, motioning for Ken to stop, and slowly climbed to his feet himself.

Crossing to the dining table, Ken wrenched out a chair. "Sit," he barked curtly at Ben. He noticed Ben's eyes flick towards the door again, and flicked a wrist, creating an energy blast that just grazed over Ben's shoulder and along his neck. It hit one of the heavy pans hanging from the ceiling on a rack and exploded, knocking the skillet into the stainless steel sink. The deafening clamour refused to die down for what felt like an eternity. "Sit," Ken repeated, his voice low, smooth and silky, hinting that more violence was to come. "Sit there, shut up, don't move, and I'm going to look for some duct tape. Okay?"

"Duct tape?" Ben asked in disbelief. He started to get up off the chair. "Oh, yeah, by the way that is SO not going to happ—"

While rummaging through a drawer and not looking at Ben at all, Ken fired off another energy blast. It smashed the centrepiece on the dining table and Ben had to duck under the flying glass shards. Water cascaded over the tabletop and spattered as a mini-Niagara over the floor.

"Fine. I'm sitting. I'm sitting…" Ben muttered, sitting back down in the chair and following Ken's progress around the kitchen with his eyes.

"Got it," Ken crowed triumphantly, waving the silver reel of tape in the air.

Ben narrowed his eyes in concentration as Ken rounded the breakfast bar towards him, and then suddenly created another ice ball and flung it at the freshman. Ken hit the floor and rolled, dodging it, and the ball blasted a pot off the saucepan rack and encased it in ice.

The freshman got up and hurled an energy blast at Ben. Whilst raising his arms to retaliate for an attack of his own, he was suddenly semi-blinded by the pain in his chest and gasped sharply. Reacting too late, Ken's attack hit him in the chest and blasted him and the chair backwards onto the floor. Groaning, the witch didn't even try to get up as Ken approached him. He was spent. There wasn't any fight left in him and he kept trying to find a place that didn't hurt in his body, just so his entire consciousness could move in there, but he couldn't. Pain. Just all over pain.

Ken managed to yank both Ben and the chair upright and, his adrenaline supply exhausted, Ben thought that he may have blacked out for a second as the back of the chair slammed into his back, bringing with it nausea and a pain even more intense. He hadn't thought that possible. It was hazily that he felt Ken taping his ankles to the legs of the chair, and it was with slightly more clarity that he felt his wrists being taped together behind him. By the time he'd snapped back fully into reality, Ken had gone back to his bedroom and was nowhere to be seen.

_**Quiet Please, I'm Stalking**_

"Scry faster or move over," Bridget snapped angrily at Wyatt, whirling out of her pacing session in a flurry of black hair to stare over the Twice Blessed Witch's shoulder again.

"'Move over'?" Wyatt repeated, fixing her with a 'duh' look and temporarily taking his eyes from the map spread out on the table in front of him. "Who else is going to do it? You?"

Bridget opened her mouth to argue but snapped it shut again, continuing her pacing. "Shut up and hurry up. That's all I ask," she bit out, running an exasperated hand through her hair again.

"I don't think there's much we can salvage," Nixa informed Wyatt morosely, leaning against the now-doorless doorframe between the sunroom and the trashed living room. "Pretty much everything has been wrecked."

Wyatt sighed. "Yeah. I knew that. I was just kinda hoping that we could get it back into shape before my mother comes home. She'll throw a fit. House trashed, son and son's idiot friend kidnapped by a demonic force. I'm looking at like four months of being grounded for this, you get that, right?"

Prue rolled her eyes. "Wyatt, chill. It's not, like, _your _fault. We get demons popping in here all the time. Like we knew one was gonna show up the night they decide to go out. They _totally _can't blame you. It wouldn't be fair. Or… ooh! We don't tell them! Yes! I like that idea. I am going to go Object of Objection on the living room's ass. Just for you!" She marched out of the sunroom and into the living room without giving anyone any time to reply to her idea.

The four remaining people in the room just stared blankly after her for a few seconds before Wyatt bent back down to scry and Bridget continued pacing and chewing on her hair. Xander was half-sitting, half-leaning on a cabinet biting his nails, tearing them off and dropping them to the floor nervously, his eyes following the crystal's every movement.

"Have we had any luck?" Nixa asked, sitting down on the edge of the wicker loveseat.

Wyatt dropped the crystal onto the map in frustration. It clanged on the cast iron underneath the paper. "Will people QUIT asking me how I'm DOING!" he exploded, shooting daggers at Nixa. "I would have found them like ten minutes ago if people would STOP breaking my CONCENTRATION!"

Nixa cocked an eyebrow at him, and then looked him up and down coolly, her blue eyes hardening. She sniffed and turned to Xander. "Is there some kind of potion you can make to end a possession?" she asked.

Xander blinked and looked up at her. "Uh…" He blinked again, harder, and then shook his head, trying to snap himself back into reality. "No. I mean, yeah. I think so. I won't have to make it, though. There's an entire cabinet full of handy little potions up in the attic. I'll go and grab us some vials." He left the room and his footfalls could be heard on the stairs.

"Look!" Prue squealed in delight. She turned the knob on the previously splintered door and opened it. It was so newly conjured that part of it was still a mass of swirling white orbs. "See! Now you don't need to tell them."

Wyatt looked up at her demonstrating the door by opening and closing it and narrowing his eyes. "Something is up. What do you want?"

Prue looked affronted. "Uh, hey, just did a _really _nice thing for you. Hello? Jeez. If a person can't be _nice _when they want to be, then—" She caught Wyatt's raised eyebrow and stamped a foot. "Fine. Fine. I need a ride. Tomorrow. Please?"

"Prue—"

"_Pleeeeease? _I just saved your ass!" she reminded angrily him, jabbing her finger at the sunroom door. "Remember?"

"_Prue_," Wyatt cut in again, clenching his teeth. "The living room was the least of our problems. Your cousin and your cousin's stupid friend are still missing. If I don't find them, then _I _won't have a ride, let alone one to give you. Okay?"

"Oh," the witch said, deflating slightly. "Is there a spell to fix that one too?"

_**Quiet Please, I'm Stalking**_

Ken made a stab for the wick of one of his candles with the lighter, but missed. There appeared to be three candles in front of him instead of just one, and they were not only blurring but spinning slightly as well. Closing his eyes and taking a deep breath in through his nose he pulled all of his focus in to light the candle. The wick flared and he flipped the lighter closed.

For a moment, he rested his head in his hands, trying to drum up the strength necessary for another shot at the ritual. He swallowed hard and had to reposition his hands as they slid across his clammy forehead. Okay. There. He had it. He opened his mouth but suddenly the air in front of him shimmered and there was a man standing there in a ragged waistcoat and a cut-off pair of what had been white pants. He was tall and bald and muscles bulged in every direction that Ken could see, rippling at the slightest movement. His eyes were cold and harsh.

"What—?"

"WITCH!" the man shouted, curling his upper lip. "I've finally tracked you down, WITCH. Thought you could get away with calling my power to you, did you? Thought you could just steal it and get away with it, did you? HUH?"

Eyes widening, Ken began to scramble up. "I didn't… I mean, I never… Well, I _didn't know_," he pleaded with the demon, shaking his head. "I didn't know if was yours. I never would have… Take it! Take it back!"

The demon grinned, exposing his teeth in a sardonic grin. "Oh, kid. You have no idea how much fun I'm going to have taking it back." His arm shot out and grabbed Ken around the throat. He began to squeeze, lifting Ken from the floor.

The freshman began choking, pummelling the arm holding him in the air. His eyes began to roll back inside his head and his face reddened. His world closing in around the edges with hovering black spectres beginning to block his view, he formed an energy blast and threw it at the demon's arm. Nothing happened.

The demon laughed. "Stupid witch. You can't use my own power against me!"

"No, but one of these might work!" a female voice informed them from across the room.

Ken tried to turn his head to the sound of the voice but couldn't. Suddenly, he felt a 'thud' shudder through the demon holding him and he was dropped to the floor, gasping for air. He briefly looked up at the demon, who was clutching his shoulder with one hand and using the other to pull an athame out of it.

"Bridget!" Ken gasped, a smile breaking out over his face as he turned to look at the new person in the room.

"So you're the witch that stole my power of possession, are you?" the female demon hissed, stalking forwards towards him. Her teeth bared in an angry snarl, she dragged Ken up from the floor. Her long, dark hair was laboriously but loosely curled and her skin was milk-pale. She would have been attractive if it weren't for the eyes that took chunks out of you like chips of solid granite. "I was in the middle of a _job_ you stupid little runt. And my bosses they aren't too forgiving. You're lucky I survived to come and get my power back. Now…" A knife appeared in her hand in one fluid motion, almost as if she'd conjured it.

"Oh, what, so you think _you're _going to kill him and get my power as well, do you? Well, think again. This witch is mine," the first demon snarled, wrenching Ken from her grasp. "I got here first. I had the superior searching skills. You just skulk back off to the Underworld now. Don't come back."

"Is that what you think I'm going to do? Then you've underestimated me. And creatures like you that do that don't tend to live very long."

The first demon grabbed Ken, wrenching him from the female demon's grasp and through the freshman towards his bedroom door. The wood splintered and Ken was blown right through it and halfway down the corridor.

"Ken!" Ben asked in disbelief, craning forward to check he was seeing things right. "What the hell is going on?"

Ken looked up and tears began to roll down his face. "Demons," he hiccupped, wiping his nose on the back of his hand. "They say I stole their powers. I didn't _mean _to, Ben, I _didn't…_ They want me dead," he finished in a tiny, squeaking voice. "What am I going to do?"

A loud, long yell burst forth through the broken door and the 'whumph' of something incinerating flashed in Ben's head even as he saw the glow fade. The female demon walked out, wiping her athame casually on her leather pants and then, just as deftly as she'd made it appear, it disappeared again.

"_Ben_," Ken begged, his teary gaze boring straight into the witch's eyes. "_Please _Ben. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry just _help me._"

"You tied me up!" Ben shouted incredulously, reminding Ken of the fact by jerking his bound arms. "Don't you think that that's going to be some kind of hindrance for me having to play hero!"

Ken got up from the floor, glanced fearfully over his shoulder at the smirking demon and made a run towards the kitchen. "I'll cut you free!"

The demon shimmered out and reappeared in front of him, backhanding him into the breakfast bar. He hit hard and slid to the floor with a groan.

Ben's eyes shot open. "Zeema!" he cried in disbelief. He swore. "You couldn't have picked a _lesser _demon to steal your powers from, Ken?"

Zeema turned, did a double take and then let out a short laugh. "I thought it was Christopher Halliwell I stepped over in there. I should have known that wherever that sorry-excuse for a Halliwell was his sidekick wouldn't be far from his side."

Ben faked a smile. "It's a pity he's not awake. I'm sure he'd like to tell you what a pleasure it is to see you."

She cocked her head. "You're going to have to remind me. Last time we met I was trying to kill…?"

"Last time? Sadly, we've only had the graciousness of your presence the once. And you were trying to take out Wyatt for your bosses. Say, didn't you fail miserably at that?" Ben added, a sly grin creeping up his face. "I seem to remember your ass got pretty thoroughly kicked, right?"

Zeema sniffed and waved a hand. "By the Charmed Ones. There's no shame in being beaten by the best."

"Whoa, wait, the Charmed _Ones_?I'm no math whiz, but I don't think Phoebe counts as the Charmed Ones. The Charmed _One, _maybe…"

"Oh, right. I didn't like you…" Zeema told him, nodding her head and squinting as she tried to remember. "Still got the smart mouth, then?"

"To the end," Ben assured her. "Are you gonna make with the killing now? Because, I gotta say, you're not so great at the conversation portion of the event."

Ken suddenly flashed past Zeema, running full pelt towards Ben with a carving knife clutched in his hand. Zeema rolled her eyes and flicked a wrist, sending her newly appearing athame spinning towards the freshman. It struck the lower left of his back and he dropped to the floor, crying out in pain. The carving knife skittered past Ben's chair.

"I cleaned these knives once today," Zeema grumbled, walking over to Ken. She put a foot on his back to stop him moving before bending down and wrenching the knife from his body. Blood immediately welled from the wound and she looked at the gore staining her blade disdainfully. She sighed. "I clean and buff and polish and sharpen and then some _human _leaves half of themselves on the knives… You humans are pathetic. You can't even incinerate when you're mortally wounded. Useless. The flames sear the blood right off the blade more often than not."

"I apologise that the anatomy of the human race doesn't make cleaning your implements after trying to kill someone any easier for you. I'll write a note to God and ask him if he can change it. But, sadly, it doesn't look hopeful."

Zeema twisted her mouth in thought, wagging the bloodied athame and him and flicking drops of still-warm-blood onto his shirt. "You know, actually, you _were _always kind of funny…"

_**Quiet Please, I'm Stalking**_

"Got them!" Wyatt yelled as the crystal slammed down onto the map. He shoved it out of his way, not noticing it shatter on the floor. "Apartment building downtown. Nixa, Bridget, let's go."

"What?" Prue asked, stamping her foot. "What about us?"

"Are you kidding me? If this goes badly, I'll be banned from _college _because I'll still be grounded. If I take you two along, Mom will let me out just in time to get wheeled into an old folk's home. It's not going to happen. Besides, they're due back soon. Someone's got to make our excuses."

"But—" Xander began.

Wyatt grabbed Nixa and Bridget. "Sorry," he said with a shrug. "Already orbed." The three of them vanished from the sunroom.

**_Quiet Please, I'm Stalking_**

**I'm just going to throw something in here about how bad I feel that I took this long to get this out. And this chapter was supposed to finish the story, but it didn't and blah. I'm so busy I don't know which way is up anymore. Bad, bad, nightmareish, bad, and it's nearly tomorrow and sleep? PAH! I don't have time for that. But hey ho hum. Um, anyway, sorry, and thanks for reviewing and YAY for you and you'll get your replies eventually, I promise but THANK YOU in the meantime and THANK YOU and I don't remember where I was going with this rant so bye!**

**_Twisted Flame._**


	10. Chapter 10

"So, how have you been, kid?" Zeema asked conversationally, looking down at her athame in annoyance and then grabbing a handful of the front of Ben's shirt and using it to clean the blade with.

Ben pulled a face at the smeared crimson stain, rolling his eyes. "Oh, you know, good. Having fun, keeping busy, flossing regularly. The usual."

"So you're in a predicament, huh?" the demon asked, lightly tracing the point of her athame along Ben's jawbone. The cold steel hissed across his flesh but didn't bite deep enough to draw blood. The witch stiffened as she lightly grazed the blade down to his Adam's apple and let it rest there. "There isn't a chance that Wyatt Halliwell will be orbing in any second to rescue you and his kid brother, is there? Because, let me tell you, my bosses? Not happy when I failed to kill him."

"Hm. Yeah. I don't think he's timetabled for the rescue mission today. He won't be coming. So you can really just—"

Orbing lights glistened at the other end of the room, coalescing into three forms. On the floor, Ken shifted, his movements causing the blood-stained carpet to squelch. He moaned into the pile. Zeema turned and threw her athame at the new arrivals.. It spun, tearing at the air, towards Wyatt, Bridget and Nixa.

"Watch it!" Ben yelled, his breath hitching in his throat and his eyes widening with panic. He leant forward in the chair, straining against the tape pinning him to it. His nails were digging into his palms subconsciously with the tension.

Nixa darted forward and clapped her hands together, trapping the blade between her hands. The hilt of the knife protruded from her palms, quivering malignantly at being stopped before its target. She swallowed, letting out the breath she'd been holding. Slowly, she let the dagger fall to her side.

"Not cool!" Wyatt yelped, his eyes bugging as he saw how near the dagger had got to his chest before Nixa had caught it. "Totally not cool! What the hell is going on here? Who's trying to turn me into a kebob when I'm barely formed? NOT a level playing field."

"Zeema," Bridget answered for him shortly, narrowing her eyes at the assassin before her. "Let me guess, you're the one possessing everyone? We should have known."

"Me? Possessing people? No, no, no. I'm the innocent victim here… for once," Zeema replied, sneering. "And it sucks. How do you all manage it so much of the time?"

Bridget snorted. "Oh, yeah. And we're supposed to believe—"

"It's true," Ben said, cutting Bridget off heavily. "It's true. It isn't her. It's Ken. He's got down with some twisted black arts and stole her power."

"Oh. Well… You can't blame me for thinking that," Bridget admitted reluctantly. "I mean, she _is_ evil and an assassin and everything."

"You're too kind," Zeema said, looking at both Nixa and Bridget in disappointment and especially eyeing the athame in Nixa's hand. "And, you know, you're so _good _and you _save_ the puny little innocents and… make me want to vomit. Are we finished with the pleasantries?"

"Hell yes," Bridget said, stepping forwards. "Bring it on, bitch." She beckoned to Zeema, shrugging out of her jacket. It slithered to the carpet.

Zeema cocked her head and quirked her eyebrow. "Fine. One thing, just let me—" Another athame appeared in her hand and she whipped it up to shoulder height and tossed it at Bridget. The Hunter dropped to the carpet and rolled, finishing in a battle crouch. The dagger continued down the corridor behind her, clattering into the wall without sticking and falling to the floor.

"Huh. Losing your touch?" Bridget asked mockingly, pretending to consider the athame's destination. "Because that, to me, looks like you're not quite as good as you were. Sorry."

Wyatt stepped forward, holding out his hands. "Hey, can we just—"

Nixa shoved his shoulder and, as the Halliwell staggered sideways, threw Zeema's own athame back at the demon, who shimmered out and shimmered back in again on the spot. Nixa growled in the back of her throat and swore as the athame sunk into the wooden door and spilt the wood.

"You see that throw, right there?" Bridget asked, gesturing to the knife behind the demon. "_That_ was a throw. Do you want to be taking notes, or—"

Snarling, Zeema flipped backwards, wrenched the dagger from the door and threw it back at Bridget. Wyatt yelped again and formed an energy ball, throwing it at the advancing blade. It incinerated the handle with a small explosion, raining a light ash onto the floor. When the explosion faded, the blade clattered to the carpet, blackened and bent.

"Can we stop, STOP hurling pointy objects at each other? PLEASE? I, for one, have no desire to get impaled! Control yourselves!"

"Wyatt? Shut up," Nixa demanded, shoving the Twice Blessed witch again so that he was behind her and Bridget.

"Yeah, butt out. This is personal," both Bridget and Zeema sneered at the same time, whipping their heads back around to glare at each other in shock.

"Are you imitating me, kid? Because, let me tell you, this," she said, gesturing to herself, "is way, _way _out of your league. Trust me."

Wyatt heaved a sigh and threw his hands up into the air, letting them slap down again on his thighs. "I quit. I quit. I'm going to go and find something to do and come back later when the posturing is over. Is that okay with everyone?"

"Uh, yeah, hey, remember me?" Ben asked. "I vote no. No, that's NOT OKAY. Do I look like I want to be impaled either?"

"Well, if you ask me, you look like you _need _to be impaled," Wyatt muttered.

"_So_ not the question I asked," Ben snapped back irritably. "Are you going to help me or not?"

"No, he's not," Zeema told him. "He's going to leave you there because we're not finished. Don't think I've forgotten you and your ice power."

"You're not the boss of me," Wyatt informed her indignantly. "If I want to save my little brother's twerp of a friend, I will!" He orbed out and reappeared behind Ben, wrinkling his nose as the carpet oozed blood onto the sole of his shoe. "What the— Ew! You could have told me that there was a freshman missing a chunk of himself right next to you!"

"Oh, right, yeah. That's the kind of thing that you just _drop _into conversation," Ben replied sarcastically. "Now, are you going to gawp or heal? Because I think he's just about dead. And I think I'm getting his blood in my shoe. Kinda gross."

"No, don't you _dare _heal him!" Zeema snapped, spinning angrily to face Wyatt. A pair of throwing stars materialised, one in each hand. As she readied them to throw, Bridget kicked her in the face and then, dropping to the floor, swung and swept the demon's legs out from underneath her.

"We weren't done talking," the Hunter reminded the demon. "You stole a catchphrase of mine. I take plagiarism very, _very _seriously."

"Unless she's doing her homework," Nixa said. "In that case, she doesn't care who or what she copies as long as it's done."

"Ruining my moment, here," Bridget informed Nixa angrily, springing up and taking up a fighting stance. "That was a good quip, right there. Now it's ruined. It's like you, you… shot me down. You shot me down, wreathed in flames! Yes! That's what you did!"

"Bridget…" Nixa tried.

"No!" Bridget shouted. "I'm kinda angry now. I don't get many quips, you know, and—"

"Bridget!" Nixa called out again, this time with heavier warning in her voice.

"I'm ranting over here! I was _saying, _just _saying, _that—"

"Oh, for God's sake. Duck!"

"Wha—?" Nixa took a run-up, just as Bridget dropped into a crouch. Using her friend's shoulders as a springboard she vaulted over Bridget and kicked Zeema in the chest with both feet, sending the demon crashing backwards into the wall.

"Quit bitching about your quips!" Nixa said in frustration. "You nearly got a knife in the neck!"

"I knew she was there," Bridget duhed, but looked uncertain. "It was _fine. _I was all over the situation."

"Uh-huh."

Ken came round with a gasp, just as the golden glow from Wyatt's hands faded. He rolled onto his back, still breathing heavily, his fingers sliding around his abdomen to probe at his wounded side. "What… what happened?" the freshman gasped, pulling his t-shirt so that he could see that it was undamaged and unmarred by blood.

"Good magic," Ben said shortly. "That, right there, was a perfect example of _good_, rightfully used, not stolen and most definitely _not_ black magic. Remember that. And now lay some on me."

"Huh?" Ken asked.

"Not you. The egomaniac blond with the vacant expression."

"Do you _want _to be healed?" Wyatt asked, folding his arms across his chest. "Because I could so just walk away if you're fine with the mess — and _what _a mess, may I just add — you're in."

"Just heal me. I didn't ask for your opinion, did I?"

"You don't have to. _Everyone _wants to know my opinion," Wyatt told him with a smirk, holding his hands over the witch's chest. They lit up and Ben felt the warm rush of the healing power coursing through his veins, knitting together his broken ribcage and fixing any other injuries he had sustained.

Zeema kicked Nixa in the stomach, sending the blonde flying backwards over the breakfast bar into the kitchen beyond. She slid across the floor and into a cupboard door. Bridget ducked under a right hook from Zeema, sprung up and blocked the assassin's left hook and threw a punch of her own. Zeema grabbed her wrist and bent her arm sideways. Bridget gasped in pain and was about to respond with her other fist when Zeema used her new leverage to flip the Hunter to the floor. Bridget grunted, the wind having been driven from her. Another athame appeared in the assassin's hand and she plunged it down towards the Hunter. Bridget rolled to the left and the blade sank through the carpet and into the floorboards beneath. As Zeema struggled to wrench it free, Bridget jumped back to her feet and kicked the assassin into the dining room table, splintering the three chairs pulled up on the side facing them. Broken stakes of wood fell around her.

"We've got to get to Chris," Ben told Wyatt. "The possession mojo did something to him. I don't know if he's okay."

"Bridget!" Nixa called from the kitchen. She tossed a frying pan at her fellow Hunter, who looked at it in confusion until she realised that Zeema had more throwing stars in her hand, ready to aim. The first one flew at her and she backhanded it like a tennis player. The metal-on-metal made a dull, flat noise and the throwing star ricocheted across the room. Wyatt ducked and it skimmed his head, coming to rest in the dead centre of a framed picture, spider-webbing the glass and tearing into the canvas underneath.

"Yeah. Now you mention it, getting out of here would be a really, _really _good idea," the Twice Blessed witch gulped, grabbing a handful of Ben's jeans and Ken's arm. They disappeared in a swirl of blue lights, the duct tape that had bound Ben dropping uselessly to the floor.

_**Quiet Please, I'm Stalking**_

"Prue, I don't think that that's going to do much good," Xander informed his cousin dully, wrinkling his face in concern as Prue slapped Chris again, trying to wake him up. "I mean, I'm no first aider but I don't think that that's how you wake an unconscious person up."

"I'd throw water on him, but do you _see _any?" Prue duhed. "It was between water and slapping. Both work equally well, but slapping is the only thing available to me. Now, if you have a better idea…"

Xander rolled his eyes and his body slumped in defeat. He sat on the end of the bed and leant forward, resting his elbows on his knees and wincing every time Prue dealt Chris another slap. He could tell Chris, when his cousin woke up with his face battered to an inch of recognition, that he had _tried _to get Prue to cut it out. Tried. He pulled a grim face, knowing that all he'd been able to do is try because no one ever bothered to listen to him anyway.

Prue raised her hand but then shrieked and fell backwards as orbing lights filled the air in front of her. She jumped to her feet and turned, grabbing Ken's desk lamp and holding it above her head like a club. As the lights began to take on a full shape she swung it.

"HEY!" Wyatt yelled, throwing out his arm. The lamp was wrenched from his cousin's grasp and flew across the room. It shattered the window with a loud crash and, after a slight delay, the shards tinkled to the sidewalk several stories below followed by the considerably louder sound of the lamp colliding with the paving stones. "Am I wearing a _sign?_ Is it 'Attempt to Kill Wyatt When He's Only Half Here Day' or something? _Jesus_, Prue. What's wrong with you?"

"How did I know you weren't a demon?" the witch snapped, then narrowed her eyes. "In fact, how do I know that you're _not _a demon. Like, right now." She tilted her head upwards and raised her eyebrows. "Huh? How do I know that you're not evil, hm?"

Wyatt looked at her in disbelief, mouth slightly open. Eventually he huffed a sigh and rolled his eyes. "Prue, you have the IQ of a pencil sharpener," he said tiredly, turning around to get an idea of the layout of the room.

Prue's body slumped. "Oh." She wrinkled her nose. "Yeah, that's definitely you. And you're _mean._"

"I'm mean with a ride," Wyatt reminded her, crouching down next to Chris and holding his hands over his prone brother, beginning to heal him.

Prue paused. "I love you?" she tried hopefully, biting her lip.

Wyatt only rolled his eyes in response, letting his healing power fade as Chris gasped and tried to sit up. "Whoa, easy," the blond said, resting his hands on his brother's shoulders. "Easy. No need to panic. You're fine."

"Ken—" Chris began, then saw the freshman in question. Anger blazed in his eyes and his arm shot out, sending Ken flying across the room into the wall. "He's the one. He's evil. He's—"

"Misguided," Ben finished for Chris. "And mentally unstable. But not evil. He's been doing magic, stealing demonic powers and I think they've sent him all the way to Crazy Town."

"Well, yeah. Powers — _demonic _powers at that — in a body not built for them are gonna mess a person up. I mean, I'm surprised he's managed to _survive _this long." The witch-whitelighter looked over at Ken and glared darkly, remembering that the entire reason that he was here was because of Ken. "Kind of a shame, actually," he added callously, accepting Ben's hand up.

"I'm gonna die?" Ken asked weakly, his eyes darting from Chris to Ben to Wyatt and then back to Chris again. "Like… die?"

"You'll burn up. The powers will consume you and there'll be nothing left of you. So yeah. You're going to die," Chris told him with a nonchalant shrug. "This is what you get when you mess with the black arts, kid."

"T-there's nothing you c-can do?" Ken asked, his old stutter returning as his eyes brimmed with tears of terror. "Come on. There's g-got to be something you can do. You're w-witches, right? Help me. Please. I didn't want any of this. I just wanted Bridget to like me. I wanted— I don't even remember what I wanted. I don't know. I didn't want to hurt anyone, I didn't, I just…" He sniffed, wiping his nose on his sleeve. "I just… wanted to be liked. By Bridget. By you. By _people._ I mean, there's not a hugely fascinating hook to me for people to form attachment to, is there? And look at you. You're so cool, so confident, so controlled… I mean you've got powers, you're popular, you—"

"'Popular'?" Chris echoed in disbelief, snorting. "You think I'm popular? Have you seen how the football-playing, single-digit-IQ jerks treat me? Have you not noticed the lack of cheerleaders lining up to date me? It's not just you that has problems. It's not just you that isn't popular. I'm not either. Ben's not, and—"

"Hey! I resent that!" Ben told Chris, looking hurt. "I'm plenty popular. I'm Mr Popular, I'm—" He caught Chris's look and conceded to his friend's cocked eyebrow with a sigh. "Yeah. I'm in the socially challenged category," he admitted with a shrug. "_Despite _having powers. It isn't our powers that define who we are. It's the people we are. I mean, to be honest, popularity? Why would you want to be constantly walking around worrying about how you look, what you're wearing, the music you're listening to, the people you're talking to? Is it worth the effort?"

Prue snorted. "Like, duh Ben. That would be what High School is _for._"

Ben turned to her. "What the hell are you doing here anyway?"

Wyatt's eyes lit up with recognition. "Yeah! What the hell _are _you doing here? I told you to stay back at the Manor! What if Mom comes home? Huh?"

Prue held her hands up. "Uh, hey. Like, hello? Do I _look _like the cosmic taxi of the pair of us? I levitate, Wyatt. Why are you yelling at me for being here? _I _didn't bring us here."

"Xander may have orbed you but you _totally _brought the both of you here," Wyatt said wryly. His head whipped around as he heard a loud crash from the next room. "Crap! Right. The bitch fight. I forgot. You are all _way _too hard to keep track of, you know that, right?" he called over his shoulder, already half-running from the bedroom and back out into the other room.

The rest of them followed him out just in time to see him cast an energy ball at Zeema, slamming her into the wall. She shattered a picture and fell onto a sideboard, sweeping family photos and a potted plant onto the floor.

"Get lost, Zeema. You know you can't win," Wyatt threatened, forming another energy ball and glaring intently as he let it revolve menacingly in his hand.

"I _will _have my power back," she snarled, getting to her feet and conjuring another athame. "And I could take every one of you in this room out to get it if I have to. And it looks like I _will _have to. So let's do this, shall we?"

"You're going to get it," Chris said, stepping forwards and yanking down Wyatt's arm. The energy ball dissolved. "I don't have the energy or the patience or the desire to clean up after a grudge match to the death between us all, okay? You're going to get it back. Ken can't keep it. We'll take it out of him and you'll get it back. Good for you?"

Zeema relented slightly, bringing the athame down to her waist. She gave a nonchalant half-shrug, looking bored. "I'd prefer a match to the death. But I guess what you're offering me is adequate. Providing I get time to—" She spun around suddenly so fast that her form dissolved into a blur. Bridget, who had been creeping up on the assassin as quietly as she knew how, didn't have time to react and squealed in surprise when Zeema grabbed her by the wrist and dragged her forwards, pressing the Hunter's back to her chest. She placed the point of her athame on Bridget's jugular.

"Get OFF me!" Bridget shrieked indignantly, moving to throw the assassin behind her but freezing as the cold steel nipped at her throat. Slowly, she straightened back up and swallowed. Her eyes crossed slightly as she struggled to get a look at what Zeema was holding to her throat.

Chris's eyes immediately hardened. A steel veneer flashed across them. "Let her go," he said icily. "If you want to A live and B get your powers back _let her go_. Now."

"What are you gonna do?" Zeema asked, her face splitting into a mocking grin. She shifted the blade, raising her eyebrows tauntingly. "Have your brother toss an energy ball at this annoying human shield here? Because I see a couple of flaws with that plan. That is, assuming you want her to live. Which, you know, if you don't…"

Bridget winced at a sudden stinging pain at the underside of her jaw. Slowly, she felt a bead of blood worm its way to the surface and bulge out, eventually becoming overgrown enough to trickle down her throat and onto her chest. She swallowed again, forcing herself to remember to breathe. Concentrating hard, she was just about managing to keep her heartbeat in check. The adrenaline surging through her was jerking her fingers but she was mainly managing to stay calm. Zeema would be able to tell if she panicked.

"You're not going to get out of here alive if you hurt her," Ben warned, narrowing his eyes and setting his jaw. The creaking of ice filled the room as it spread from his fingertips to cover his whole fists.

"The smart-ass freak has a point," Wyatt added, forming an energy ball in his hand. "Do you really want to chance it?"

"What are you going to do? She's standing in the way of all attacks. How are you gonna hit me?"

"Oh, we'll manage it," Chris assured her through gritted teeth. Eyes blazing, he flung his arm so that his right hand was over his left shoulder and was about to swing it forward and unleash a telekinetic blast when Nixa grabbed his wrist.

"Chris, _think_," she hissed at the witch-whitelighter. "Even if you do send her flying only she's still holding Bridget. Bridget will go with her. And what's going to happen with that athame mid-flight, huh?"

Chris sighed angrily, seeing sense and slowly lowered his arm to his side, clenching his hand into a fist. "Just go. We promised you your powers back. Get out."

"Oh, so you're going to give the demonic assassin her powers back, are you? So she can come back and kill you another day? Why don't I quite believe that? I quite like having my insurance here."

"They can't stay in him," Chris spat back angrily, gesturing at Ken. "They're _killing _him. So we're going to have to take them out of him. And they need somewhere to go, and they'll go back to their owner. We can't create or destroy powers, energy, we can only transfer them. That's the way it works."

"Well, technically, Emc², where the E is energy, m is mass and c is the speed of light in a vacuum—" Nixa stopped, closing her mouth with a snap. "Sorry. Not the time for Relativity, huh?"

"No."

"We need to get home," Xander reminded them, checking his watch. "In like… now. Firstly, it's curfew. Secondly, they're gonna be back soon. We'll be in _serious _trouble."

"Oh, right, yeah. Because it's a viable option to just leave right now, isn't it?" Wyatt snapped sarcastically, not taking his eyes of Zeema and Bridget.

"Hey, _you _were the one worried about being grounded until you were sixty, remember?" Xander sniped back, folding his arms. "I'm simply reminding you."

"Well, thank you but unless you can come up with a way to solve this crisis within the next three seconds, then I'm going to have to just deal with my mother's wrath. So be useful, or be qui—"

Xander huffed a sigh and rolled his eyes heavily, stepping forwards and flicking his wrists. Instantly, Bridget and Zeema both froze. "Does that count as being useful?"

Wyatt sniffed, letting his energy ball evaporate. "Well, you know, I wouldn't exactly _say _that, because, um—"

"You _owe _me," Xander said, cutting Wyatt of stonily and he walked forward and yanked the athame from Zeema's inanimate hand, looking at it blankly for a couple of seconds and then tossing it over the dining room table. "Big time." He stepped sideways and twisted his mouth in thought for a second before unfreezing the pair. He then stuck a nail from the hand he had used into his mouth.

Zeema's hand closed around thin air and in the moment of confusion that followed Bridget realised that there was no longer an athame threatening to cut her neck and a loosened grip on her and she flipped the assassin forwards.

"Bitch!" Zeema seethed, sitting up slightly and glaring at the gathered group of people at the end of the room. "Get me my powers back. You have an hour. If they're not back to me in that time, I'm coming. And it won't be pretty. Want to see a preview?" Before the athame had even finished materialising, Zeema had sprung up and planted it firmly in Bridget's stomach.

Bridget gasped, doubling over, shaking hands fumbling for the weapon's hilt and slickly sliding it from her body and letting it drop to the floor. Blood cascaded and foamed from the wound in a new wave as the blade came out and the Hunter fell to her knees.

"An hour," Zeema said coldly, shimmering out.


	11. Chapter 11

Bridget lay on the rug, blood spreading across the ripped cotton of her blue shirt. She looked stunned, her face pale and shocked at the sudden attack. Gently, she pressed her hands to her wound. Blood pumped through her fingers, making them slick and slippery and she grimaced as the black blood seeped into the fibres of shirt and across her torso, taking with it a warm stickiness.

"Wyatt!" Chris called desperately, rushing across the floor to Bridget. His cry was unnecessary, however, because Wyatt reached Bridget's side just as Chris did, his hands already glowing. "Are you okay?" Chris asked desperately, his knees smarting with the carpet burn. Ignoring it, his eyes searched her face for an answer.

"She's a kebob, Chris. Redundant question, don't you think?" Ben said, trying to make his concern for Bridget sound light-hearted. He, too, watched both Bridget and the healing intently, chewing on his lower lip.

"It's just a paper cut," Bridget hissed dismissively, colour slowly coming back into her cheeks as she sat up, aided by Wyatt's power. The wound pulled, not healed all the way and she hissed again, irritated by Wyatt's lack of haste. "_Today _would be nice," she demanded of Wyatt, lying back down again but craning her neck upwards to watch him heal her. "Anytime soon..." she added in a singsong voice.

"One more word, and I'll leave you right here to bleed out," Wyatt threatened, not taking his eyes of his glowing hands and Bridget's wound. "I mean it."

"You wouldn't finish applying your tingly touch to me before I was done. It's not in your fairy nature," Bridget dismissed teasingly, the flesh around her abdomen tightening as the wound closed all the way. "See? I told you so."

"You're lucky I like you," Wyatt intoned dryly, setting his jaw. "And no, I'm not part fairy. I'm part-angel. There's a difference. Look it up. If, you know, you know how to read and all…"

Bridget sniffed. "Whatever," she said nonchalantly and breezily, pressing at her stomach with her fingers to check that the gash really was healed. "Fairy and angel — Po-tay-to, po-tah-to. At the end of the day, you put either one on top of your Christmas tree."

"I wish I hadn't healed you know," Wyatt muttered, getting back to his feet. "You're such a bitch when you're not bleeding to death."

"Screw you. I'm like this _all _the time," Bridget snorted, getting to her feet and looking down at her stomach again. "Jesus, what a _bitch_. If your tingly touch didn't suck the blood right back into me, my shirt would be stained. This is my _favourite _shirt."

"You have like five identical shirts," Nixa reminded her, deadpan. "I was there when you bought them. You got bored, found one design you liked and picked up five. How do you know that this is your favourite one?"

"Hey, firstly, they're all different colours—"

"—Black, white and a couple of shades of grey _aren't _different colours," Nixa cut in stonily, folding her arms.

"This one is navy blue," Bridget pointed out loftily to Nixa with a dignified snort, straightening it out.

Nixa rolled her eyes. "You bought blue because you thought it was another black one and then you lost the receipt and were stuck with it."

Bridget set her jaw and narrowed her eyes, visibly trying to think up a response. "I'm mortally wounded!" she finally told Nixa, jabbing a finger towards her abdomen. "Be nice!"

"Our hour's a-ticking," Ben reminded the group before Nixa could reply. "We've got a power-stripping potion to make before Zeema comes back and tries to run some more of us through. Just so it's clear, I for one don't want that to happen to me. So time to move out, yeah?"

"Right…" Wyatt muttered, running a hand backwards through his hair. "Come on. Let's get back to the Manor." Placing a hand on Bridget's arm, he orbed them both out.

Xander grabbed Prue and they both dissolved into a swirl of blue and white lights as well, disappearing through the ceiling. Finally, Chris, making sure that they were all touching, orbed Nixa, Ben and Ken back to the Manor, leaving the trashed apartment in darkness.

_**Quiet Please, I'm Stalking**_

The orbs announcing Chris's arrival flared to life in the kitchen, shimmering on the stainless steel of the pot that Wyatt already had on the island's hob. Bridget was sitting on the counter behind Wyatt, half-watching his actions with a slightly curious expression and absently picking at her nails, the chipped polish flaking off with each pick. She looked up as they arrived, acknowledging them with a smile. Ken stumbled out of the orbing lights drunkenly, making a grab for the kitchen island but missing and falling to the ground. Bridget cocked a disdainful eyebrow, peering for a second over the far edge of the island at Ken's sprawled form before looking back at her nails.

"Is he okay?" Wyatt asked conversationally, also craning to take a look at the freshman before beginning to shred some dried leaves. He shrugged nonchalantly. "He better not die on the floor. Mom'll be bleaching it all week if he does."

"I'm sorry. I'll go find some newspaper to put under him or something," Ben replied very dryly, making no move to go and fetch anything.

"Where are Xander and Prue?" Chris asked, noticing them absent from the kitchen.

"Oh, there was something on TV that Prue wanted to watch. And Xander said something about homework. Or whatever. I don't know. I love how loyal they are to their witchly duties." He frowned, and then rolled his eyes, eventually shrugging it off. "Although, I guess, he isn't actually _their_ innocent. And you can't expect something to hold Prue's attention for more than half an hour…" He shrugged again, poking at the contents of the pot with a spoon. "Hey, you know what? He isn't even _my _innocent. Why am I standing here with cooking duty?"

"Because you're a woman?" Bridget tried, smiling sweetly as the blond turned around to scowl at her. "Hurry up, honey!" she perked dizzily,, snapping her fingers impatiently. "I want to see your fingers worked to the bone!"

"I could soooo own you," Wyatt snorted haughtily, grinning slyly at her. "Remember that."

"Oh yeah?" Bridget asked, both of her eyebrows flicking up. She shifted forward on the counter, ready to make a move to jump down. "You think so?"

"Yeah, I think so," Wyatt returned confidently, turning around so that he was facing her fully.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah!"

"Yeah?"

"Yeah!"

"Y—"

"Enough!" Ben yelled suddenly, throwing his arms up in the air. "Enough! Jesus! This is all you guys EVER do now and it's getting annoying! Both of you just SHUT UP and go have a match to the death to answer this question if that's what you want. I don't care. Just STOP IT!"

"Jeez, who got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning?" Bridget asked, looking Ben up and down, eyebrows raised in slight annoyance. Her face showed vague signs of contempt. "Moody much?"

"Yeah, lighten up, man. There are old men more cheerful than you," Wyatt said accusingly, pointing the wooden spoon at Ben and looking as if he had been mildly offended by the witch.

"But—" Ben began but stopped, shaking his head. "Never mind," he muttered, giving up and going to lean against the fridge in silence, observing the group from the corner of the kitchen.

"Ken…?" Nixa asked uncertainly, noticing that the freshman hadn't got up. "Did he black out?" she wondered aloud, crouching down next to him and grabbing his shoulder, shaking him. He didn't respond. Noticing how flushed he looked, the blonde put a hand to his forehead and then withdrew it quickly. "He's burning up…" she said worriedly, her own forehead creasing into a frown as she got back to her feet. "How long is that potion going to take?"

"Well, considering that Wyatt's let half the leaves we need boil down without adding the rest to boil with them, a while," Chris said dryly, walking round the island and grabbing the pot off the burner. He carried it over to the sink and dumped the useless concoction down the waste disposal. Taking the pot back to the hob, he shoved Wyatt to the side with his shoulder and picked up the packet that Wyatt had been using and began slowly shredding more leaves.

"Well, you're not exactly the potions master yourself," Wyatt reminded him reproachfully, walking around the kitchen island and glancing down at Ken, and then stepping over the freshman to get to the fridge. He pulled out a bottle of water and twisted the cap off and began drinking. "Don't you remember that potion that ate the bottom of Mom's favourite pot?" he continued, putting his bottle down on the drainer.

Chris only rolled his eyes and stabbed at the bottom of the cast iron pot with the wooden spoon before sprinkling in some more herbs and turning the gas a little higher, choosing to ignore his brother. He had to do it regularly. Otherwise, he'd go insane; possibly commit fratricide, which would lead to grounding. Maybe even no dessert for a week as well, which would be his biggest loss.

Ben twisted his mouth in private thought and wandered across the kitchen aimlessly, hopping up onto the set of shelves separating the breakfast nook from the rest of the kitchen and watching Chris's progress, occasionally glancing at the comatose freshman on the floor. "You know, when Zeema gets her power back are we just going to let her go?" he asked. "Because she's already come back and bitten us on the ass once by being the one that got away."

"Talking about me?" a voice asked from behind Ben. He turned, about to jump off the shelves when he was backhanded across the face, splitting his cheek open and tossing him onto the floor face down, away from the shelves as originally intended but in a more painful manner.

Dabbing gingerly at his bleeding cheekbone with the back of his hand, he pushed himself up to shoot Zeema an angry glare. The assassin had shimmered in behind him in the breakfast nook with another demon. "Don't you know how to _knock_?" Ben demanded, sitting up fully. "Because that was a little rude. Did you skip out on Manners 101 or something?"

"Manners! Damn. I knew there was something I'd forgotten. Perhaps I should have started with one of _these,_" she said, ending on a snarl and forming an athame, which she tossed at Ben.

Chris flicked a wrist and the knife was jerked off course, cracking the glass in the door between the kitchen and the dining room and falling to the floor. He stepped around the kitchen island. "We agreed on an hour," he reminded her icily. "We'll give you what you want, but it'll take longer than the twenty minutes you've given us. So, if you want to take your wacky time-keeping and your demon buddy there and get lost until we're done that'd be a real help."

Zeema rolled her eyes heavily. "You can tell you're a Halliwell. Loyalty and the rest of that crap. Chris. Chris, Chris, Chris. I'm a _demon_," she said, pointing to herself casually with another athame to illustrate it. "Did you _really _expect me to take our little agreement seriously?" She threw the athame suddenly, this time at Chris. Panicked, the witch-whitelighter threw out his hand and the dagger shot upwards towards the ceiling, embedding itself in one of the overhead strip lights and shorting it out in a spray of white sparks and fine glass shards.

Wyatt threw out his arm, intending to send Zeema flying backwards into the wall, but the demon with her stepped in front of her and seemed to absorb the telekinesis, glowing slightly and then shaking his head as if nothing had happened.

"Oooookay what the hell is up with this fresh evil?" Wyatt asked uncertainly, throwing out his arm again and achieving the same result. He turned to the non-demonic members of the kitchen with panic flaring in his eyes. His powers weren't working properly. As the Twice Blessed, it was very, very rare for him to be in a situation where his powers were insufficient. Flickers of vulnerability were rattling the usually cool teenager, reminding him that, beneath it all, he was a human.

"This is Borith," Zeema filled in affectionately, placing her hand on his shoulder. He turned his large, square, Frankenstein's-Monster-esque head towards Zeema and cracked a wide but gormless smile in her direction. "He's great. Aren't you?" She patted his shoulder again and turned to the rest of the kitchen. "Fellow assassin," she filled in briefly. "I mean, I had to have a little insurance, you know, because you're a sneaky bunch of brats and I couldn't guarantee that you would honour your word. So… Borith!" She smiled, turning away from him slightly. "He's nice enough, but there's something amiss between the ears," she confessed in an aside, not taking her hand from his shoulder. "But you know, nice enough."

Suddenly, Borith glowed again and Wyatt was catapulted backwards into the set of wall cupboards behind the blond. He hit the middle cupboard full on with his back. The glass shattered and the wood splintered completely, leaving only the back of the cupboard on the wall, which Wyatt was slammed back into. The crockery that the cabinet had contained rained down onto the counter, smashing with a deafening series of crashes. Wyatt fell hard amongst the white shards and, breathing hard, was just about getting up when Borith glowed again and Wyatt was flung sideways across the kitchen into another set of cabinets next to the door. The blond hit the counter first this time before falling to the ground. Assorted cereals sprinkled down around him, their boxes crushed to the point of exploding, hissing like falling rain in the volume they hit the tiles.

Bridget swore, her eyes widening at the sight, and sprang from the counter, dashing over to Wyatt. She dropped to her knees beside his groaning form and winced, using her finger and thumb to pluck three large splinters from his chin and cheek, and a sliver of glass from his forehead. "Are you okay?"

Wyatt shook his head, trying to clear it. Pain flashed across his face in waves for a few seconds before he gritted his teeth and screwed up his face, trying to stop the ringing in his ears. "Yeah…" he finally allowed, not risking getting up into a sitting position. "I think so, anyway. This is a first. Demonic attack, I come out unscathed. Huh." Experimentally, he began moving each of his limbs in turn. "Well, nothing broken. Look at that," he said, beginning to move his hand. "So I guess that's a— OW. OW."

Bridget jumped at his sudden outburst. "What?"

"My wrist…" Wyatt informed her grimly, clutching his left wrist with his right hand. "I think we'll have to slam the brakes on the 'Nothing's Broken' Theory…"

Bridget rolled her eyes. "Pfft. It's not broken," she dismissed, grabbing his wrist and moving his hand. "If there's one thing I know, it's First Aid and if it _was_ broken, doing this would hurt like—" She looked back at Wyatt, whose eyes had crossed. His face and become grey and he was leaning backwards, held up only by her. Her eyes widened and she let go of his wrist, causing the blond to fall back to the floor. "Oh! Oops. I'm sorry. Really. Sorry… And, you know, like I'm a doctor. Why did you trust _my _opinion?"

"I didn't _trust _you," Wyatt hissed through gritted teeth, clutching his wrist again. "You just went ahead and started _crunching _my broken wrist. Warning would be good next time, you know? _Fuck._"

Bridget sighed. "Don't get your panties in a bunch. It's not like you broke you're _neck _or anything. Jeez."

"No, but right now I could very easily break _yours_ right about now," Wyatt retorted harshly.

"My very strong although incredibly pretty neck? With two girly hands _and_ a broken wrist? Don't think so," Bridget snorted, getting up off the floor.

Across the room, Chris flung out his arm at Borith, but again the demon glowed and nothing happened. Chris narrowed his eyes in thought, backing away slowly from the demon as the cogs churned in his head, trying to work out what the deal with this demon was. He vaguely remembered something in the Book of Shadows about a demon like this, but his brain was scrabbling at the information which remained elusively out of reach and he couldn't quite place it.

Suddenly, something clicked in Chris's head but it was too late. Borith began glowing and Chris was yanked off his feet and towards Borith and Zeema. The smirking demoness sidestepped Chris's flying form and allowed the witch to crash onto his back onto the kitchen table, snapping one of the legs. Chris slid to the floor on the precarious incline, just about catching the glass fruit bowl before it broke on the tiles text to his head.

Ben slipped quickly around the back of the kitchen island, never taking his eyes off the two demon intruders, towards Nixa, the only other one of them left standing. "We're not winning this, are we?" he hissed to the blonde Hunter.

"Would your first clue be the partial remodelling of the Halliwell kitchen?" Nixa snapped back. She was chewing on her lip in desperate thought, trying to work out a plan of attack that wouldn't involve her getting run through with one of Zeema's athames. "We need something…" she muttered quietly, half to Ben and half to herself, her mind racing as she kept up the glaring standoff. "_Something…_" she bit out desperately through her teeth, angry at her mind going so blank on her.

"Let's see how he handles the temperature dropping a few degrees," Ben said, flicking a wrist and forming a jagged icicle, which he threw at Borith like a javelin. The witch smirked, watching the ice run the demon clean through the chest.

Borith staggered backwards, clutching at the icicle in his chest. Suddenly, and perhaps not unexpectedly, the demon glowed and the icicle disappeared in a flash of light. Borith stood up straight again as if nothing had ever happened.

"Ooookay, that, that right there, was a straight shot through the heart," Ben told Nixa, turning to her with panic in his eyes, fuelling his babbling. "Did you see that run him right through the heart and _not_ vanquish him? We have a problem. A big problem. A big, big problem. Did I mention that we have a problem? That's a little on the large side?"

"Ooooh yeah," Nixa breathed, fear causing her exhalation to shake slightly. "Oh, right. I nearly forgot. Dibs on announcing that we're all screwed."

"Hey, no fair. I was _just _about to call it," Ben whined, sighing heavily. "Fine," he said resignedly, moodily. "Go on then."

"We're screwed," Nixa voiced, giving a shrug. "We're actually a hundred percent screwed. God, I _love_ not having to be the optimist."

"He absorbs magic!" Chris yelled at Ben and Nixa, using the slanted table to pull himself to his feet. "Magic isn't going to work — he'll just absorb it and turn it back on you!"

Zeema cocked her head, an impressed smile quirking at her lips. She let out a small, pleasantly surprised noise. "Huh. You know, you're a lot smarter than I gave you credit for. I figured it'd take you _hours _to work that out. By which time I'd have the kid and my powers and could be on my way. It'd be some good detective work, if smart mouths didn't get you into so much _trouble_." Zeema ended with a snarl, slicing a punch downwards at Chris that sent the witch-whitelighter sprawling, out cold, onto his back.

As Borith lit up again, Ben's eyes widened and he grabbed Nixa's wrist. "Run," he hissed urgently, beginning to drag her across the room towards Wyatt and Bridget who were on the other side of the kitchen next to the door separating them from the dining room.

"Wha—?" Nixa began, but was cut off as a dreadful rattling filled the room, emanating from Borith.

Ducking double and using one hand to shield his face and the other to yank Nixa along, Ben dashed as fast as he could for the other side of the kitchen as Borith's body spat a concentrated stream of bullet-like hail at them as if he were holding an ice machinegun. The remaining cabinets on the wall behind them began shattering, violently shooting shards of glass in all directions from their splintering doors. Crockery and glassware in the cupboards began exploding as if firecrackers had been put under them and lit, the resulting debris blowing more than one cabinet door from its hinges and sending them crashing to the floor.

The walls became peppered with the tiny hail-holes, looking as if they were targets on a shooting range. Nixa shrieked, feeling white-hot sparks from the destruction of the microwave and the small TV on the counter graze the backs of her arms and legs. The witch and the Hunter skidded the last metre over the tiles right into Wyatt's protective bubble. Ice began ricocheting off the shield, pinging around the kitchen. Another strip light overhead shattered in a white fireworks display, plunging the kitchen into all but darkness. Suddenly, the bullets stopped. The silence deafened them.

Ben leant against the door of the kitchen unit behind him, breathing heavily. He closed his eyes, trying to force his pulse rate to return to somewhere near normal. "Huh…" he finally gasped out, opening his eyes and running his hands through his hair. "Huh. Really. Huh. That was bracing… Is everyone okay?"

"No…" Nixa whimpered, wincing as she pulled up her skirt to reveal that her kneecap in entirely the wrong place in her leg. "I think I've dislocated it. Must have twisted it when we started running…"

"Pop it back in?" Bridget suggested, clambering over Wyatt towards her fellow Hunter. "Look, I'll show you. All you need to do is—"

"DON'T let her anywhere _near_ an injury," Wyatt snapped severely, holding his broken wrist with his other hand. "Seriously. It'll only result in more pain."

"I diagnosed your broken wrist, didn't I?" Bridget scoffed. She retreated back into her original position, a mixture between a scowl and a pout marring her features.

"_I _already knew it was broken," Wyatt reminded her harshly. "The crunching around _you _did with it was just a little bit redundant, don't you think?"

"Bite me," Bridget said sulkily, folding her arms. "I was only _trying _to help, you know."

"Bite you? Can I get a hell hound to do that for me?"

"Oh, what, too afraid to bite me yourself?" Bridget asked, beckoning to Wyatt and tilting her head sideways. "Come on then, you woman. I'll give you a free shot. My neck is right here." She twisted her hair in her hand, exposing her jugular fully.

"Hey, quit it. Demon to vanquish, remember?" Ben reminded them. "Don't make me send you both to your corners."

"He started it," Bridget muttered, setting her jaw in anger and looking to the detritus on the floor.

"_How _did I start it?" Wyatt asked in disbelief, spreading his uninjured arm wide. "What did _I _do to invoke the wrath of The Bridget?"

Nixa suddenly let out such an animal scream of pain that Wyatt, Bridget and Ben all jumped and Wyatt and Bridget's argument stopped abruptly as they stared open-mouthed at the blonde, whose head was thrown backwards, her eyes screwed tightly shut and her mouth open, still screeching silently. Breathing fast, she tilted her head back forward, allowing tears to leak down her cheeks, and spat out the torn shred of cereal packet that she had folded and bitten down on before relocating her knee. "Son of a BITCH!" she yelled, tearing her throat on the volume. "Son of a two dollar, syphilitic WHORE!" she added for good measure, at the same volume.

"Where do you pick _up _this language?" Wyatt asked in amazement, still unable to tear his eyes away from Nixa's animal look. "I was always under the impression that you were the group's cute, butter-wouldn't-melt one. Wow. This is a whole new, scary side to you."

Nixa screamed again but quieter and with more control, her voice hoarser this time, before she spoke. "Okay now," she gulped. "I promise. I'm fine. Just… Okay. Demon. Go."

Ben shrugged. "I can't do anything. Not without magic. I'm no good against him."

"Ditto," Wyatt said. "And even if I could, Nurse Bridget's 'Just Bruised' wrist right here wouldn't do me much good in a fight anyway. I should _so _sue you for malpractice, you know that, right?"

"I'll have to wait a while to walk on my knee…" Nixa said, her blue eyes the last of the group to slide to Bridget.

"Well, we all knew that I'd be doing the killing anyway, right?" Bridget said dryly, reaching up onto the counter and grabbing a box-cutter that she'd seen there earlier and pushing it to full extension.

"Well, it _is _what you do best…" Ben agreed, shrugging, shooting her a sly smile. "And you know that you love it."

Bridget grinned. "Hell yeah," she said, readying the cutter in her hand. "Okay. I'm ready. Let the shield down. We're going to do this thing."

"I have a better idea," Wyatt told her with a smirk. "Good luck." He waved his good hand, and Bridget disappeared in a cloud of orbs.

_**Quiet Please, I'm Stalking**_

"No way, Prue. We are _not _going in there," Xander said again, shaking his head firmly. "Uh-uh. No way. It's not gonna happen."

"Come _on_," Prue whined, stamping her foot. "We're witches. We've gotta, like, _fight _demons, otherwise we're just witches." She paused, frowning and cocking her head. "Wait… Did that make sense?"

"No," Xander told her shortly, not even bothering to expend the energy to roll his eyes. "No, it didn't."

"Oh. I think that maybe I intended to work in cowardice in there somewhere, but it got lost along the way… Never mind. The point is, they _need _us and we're stuck here listening at the door. That's not very family-like, is it?"

"You just saw Wyatt — our oldest cousin and, oh, Twice Blessed witch, most powerful magical being on Earth — get _tossed_ not once but twice around our kitchen by that demon. The post powerful magical being on Earth. Tell me, Prue. What's your active power?"

Prue sniffed. "Okay, so I just levitate. I get it: that's not exactly a big gun. But you're not much better, Mister Freeze and Mister Orb and Mister… Uh…?"

"That's it. Two powers, Prue. That's all I have. No more 'Misters' after orbing."

"Seriously? I _swear _you had three powers…"

Xander fixed her with a pained look, letting her know how hopeless he thought her future through his eyes. "No. No, I don't. Look, we need help, you know that, right?"

"But I promised Mom that I'd do my Math homework while she was gone and I didn't because I had something better to do… She's gonna be mad if she comes home and it turns out that I haven't done it…"

"Yeah," Xander said dryly. "I know. That's our biggest problem, right there…" He sighed, looking up to the ceiling and calling, "Mom! Mom? We need a little help here…" Just a beat later, orbing lights swirled in the dining room behind them.

_**Quiet Please, I'm Stalking**_

"Whoa…" Bridget murmured, suddenly realised that she'd been orbed here. She took a few seconds to regain her balance before realising that she was on the other side of the kitchen, standing next to the unconscious but gently-moaning Chris and behind both Borith and Zeema. At her dazed intonation, both of the whirled to face her. "Oh, hey," she said chirpily, grinning. "What's the what, guys?"

Zeema threw a punch at the Hunter, but Bridget blocked it and drove her own fist into Zeema's abdomen. While the demoness was doubled over, Bridget punched her in the face, throwing her up into the air to slam down onto the low shelves between the kitchen and the breakfast nook and roll off the other side.

"Anyway, I just wanted to say—" Bridget began, just as the swinging door between the dining room and the kitchen burst open, revealing the three Charmed Ones standing there.

Her eyes absorbing the state of affairs in a split second and her brain processing it at lightning speeds, Piper saw Borith and automatically raised her hands, flicking her wrists towards the demon almost without thinking about it.

"NO!" Wyatt, Bridget, Nixa and Ben yelled, loud enough for Piper to actually stagger a little in shock and confusion.

"What the hell is going on here?!" the oldest Charmed One demanded, unaware of her power hitting Borith full on in the chest and Bridget diving sideways to hide behind the broken table.

"DUCK!" the same four voices screamed, giving their advice in unison and Piper's explosive power, reformed inside Borith, left the demon's body.

----------------------

Hey everyone! This is twisted flame's beta, xphoenixrising. We're happy to finally present to you Chapter 11! I know. It's taken awhile to get out but we're very pleased with it. One more chapter to go and then we'll have something else coming out someday. So many ideas! (And I'm such a slave driver). So I hope you enjoyed this. His note will be coming tomorrow-ish.


	12. Chapter 12

The blue shield around Nixa, Wyatt and Ben disappeared and reformed in front of the Charmed Ones, who had not followed the screamed demand to duck. The pulsating blue force field filled the entire doorway just before the reformed explosion hit it. It flared orange and began to cave inwards towards the three stunned witches before it was suddenly violently catapulted off the shield and across the kitchen, taking out the window above the sink as well as half of the wall.

When the roar of the rush of power and the demolition faded, mortar dust sprang up, choking the air with red-grey dust. The rubble and glass finally settled and stopped tumbling over each other. Stunned silence settled over the kitchen with the dust before the smoke alarm, triggered by wayward coils of smoke rising from the explosion, went off. The faucet had gone and water was spewing into the air, spattering to the dust-coated tiles and creating a muddy, slowly-advancing lake. Night air spilled into the room with the sound of dogs barking all across the neighbourhood. In the neighbours' drive, their car alarm was going off, the shrieking siren broken with long blasts of the horn.

"You know," Ben observed, slowly coming down from the shock of suddenly having lost half of the room, "we made a mess fighting this guy, but we didn't do _that._" The car alarm cut out, and he realised that his ears were ringing.

Piper shot a death glare at her son's best friend and flicked her wrists again, this time to freeze. Deathly silence once again overtook the room, not even punctuated by the fountain of water or the incessant smoke alarm.

"Well, you did say you were thinking about a new kitchen," Paige told her sister faintly, not taking her eyes off the destruction. "I guess now we don't have much choice…"

"What are the neighbours going to think…?" Piper wondered, putting a hand to her mouth. She stepped forward, barging through Wyatt's shield with her shoulder. He let it down and her sisters followed her into the room. Piper, mouth still open, stuck a hand on her hip and she surveyed her new al fresco kitchen. "Did I really do this?" she asked, turning back to the room. "Wow. I really put some force behind that, didn't I?" She shook her head. "Not the point. What the hell is going on?" She became suddenly demanding, turning on the animated teenagers in the room.

"Demon there and demon there," Wyatt filled his mother in flatly, pointing out both Zeema and Borith. "We didn't just fancy doing some amateur demolition, you know. There was actually a reason for all of this." He waved his broken arm and immediately hissed in pain, clamping his good hand around it and clutching it close to his chest.

"The big one who looks like he should be a football player and probably would be if he had the IQ — and that's saying something — absorbs magic and spits it right back out at you," Ben elaborated. "We've been having fun, did you notice?"

"And who's the unconscious guy?" Phoebe wondered, spotting Ken on the floor. The dust from the demolition had settled across his hair and skin, turning them grey and ageing him. The water from the flood had been creeping slowly around him, being sucked into his sweater before Piper had frozen it.

"It's a long story," Wyatt said, shaking his head. "I don't know how long they're gonna stay frozen. Do you think we could do something about them first? They're not so amicable when they're moving."

"I'm on it," Paige assured them, looking around the room. "Um… Jagged piece of… whatever that used to be!" she called and something vaguely-metallic looking and charred orbed from the wreckage and straight through Borith's chest, squelching as it came out the other side.

Borith reanimated and stared down at his chest, hands gripping at the weapon for a few seconds before flames licked out from the wound and began to consume him. He looked up and screamed as the inferno roared around him, culminating in a huge explosion that rocked the kitchen for the second time that night.

Bridget, frozen in the breakfast nook close to Borith, was blasted off her feet and through the open door into the laundry room, slamming into the dryer hard enough to dent it. Although reanimated she lolled limply, unconscious. The door slammed closed behind her, shattering all of the glass in it as the explosion grew.

Wyatt held out his good hand, throwing his shield around the explosion, shaking with the effort of holding it in. Beads of sweat popped out from his forehead and the explosion inched further and further outwards, the blue force field stuttering. He finally held up the hand attached to his broken wrist and made a pushing motion despite the stabs of pain it was causing him. Slowly the explosion began to shrink inside the shield until it was about the size of a baseball. Wyatt clenched his good hand into a fist and the small orb disappeared with a flare of the violent orange light contained inside it. "Is Chris okay?" he asked desperately, gasping for breath. "It didn't get him, did it?"

Ben stood up and looked over into the breakfast nook and shook his head, letting out a relieved sigh. "No. He's fine. I think it just missed him. You caught it just in time. And hey. I ran him through the chest and he didn't die. What's so special about you, Paige?"

"You did?" the witch-whitelighter asked, cocking her head and narrowing her eyes in confusion. "Like… all the way through?"

"Yeah. Clean through," Ben reassured her. "Is this something lame like it's because I'm a mere lowly witch and you are, of course, a Charmed One?" he asked, rolling his eyes heavily.

"You ran him through with an icicle," Wyatt reminded him. "One you magically created. He absorbs magic. Paige didn't create that… thing that probably used to be a very useful part of our kitchen, she just magically transported it through him. That would be why." He paused. "Either that or, you know, you're right and you _are _a total loser. On reflection, I know which door I'd take."

Ben rolled his eyes and smiled tiredly. "You know, I thought you'd gone too long being civil to me. I was beginning to wonder what was wrong with you. Apart, of course, from the obvious facial disfigurements and stuff."

"Oh my God! Is that _Zeema?_" Phoebe shrieked suddenly, her eyes widening as she spotted the frozen assassin, cutting off Wyatt just as he was about to open his mouth in retort. "She's the one after you? I thought we managed to put her off attacking us again… Piper, you need to do something with that."

"Oooooh no," Piper replied, shaking her head and laughing humourlessly. "No, no, no. Are you forgetting what the last one did to my kitchen? I'm not losing another wall. The whole house will be down around our ears and I, for one, am not looking into life out of a cardboard box. Are you? Without an outlet to plug in your crimpers? Will that be fun for you?"

"She moved," Ben said suddenly. "She moved," he repeated unnecessarily, pointing at the assassin. "I swear I just saw her move."

"Wha—?" Piper began, but didn't finish. Zeema broke free of the freeze holding her and immediately whipped her head around to check for Borith. Seeing him gone her eyes narrowed and you could almost see the quick calculations going on behind them. Judging herself no match for the sheer number of witches in the room she sneered and shimmered out before anyone could attack her.

"We really need to vanquish her," Phoebe said matter-of-factly. "She's becoming a pain in the ass."

"'Becoming'?" Piper repeated dryly, turning back to her severe lack of a wall. "Now, do we object of objection this or do we claim gas explosion and get some contractors in? Do you think any of the neighbours have seen it?"

"Judging by the fact that Mrs Rexel is peering out of her second storey window right in on us I'd say it's a pretty good chance they've noticed," Paige replied tersely, giving their neighbour a small wave. The net-curtain dropped and Mrs Rexel vanished, replaced by a blurry shadow.

Piper cleared her throat, panicked, and made a small movement with her hand and unfroze the entire kitchen. The smoke alarm made her jump and she put a hand to her head and then to her chest, closing her eyes wearily and counting to ten. "So… who want to call up the insurance firm and explain this, then?" she asked brightly, smiling. "Anyone? No? Well, what a surprise. I guess that's me then, huh?"

_**Quiet Please, I'm Stalking**_

"I feel like Florence freaking Nightingale," Paige muttered. "I swear if one of you even suggests one of those fugly-ass dresses she wore I'm going to give you a real reason to need healing. With my fist." She paused in her grumbling long enough to finish healing Wyatt's wrist and then sat back on her heals, dusting her hands together. "Who's next?" she chirped, getting up and looking around the sunroom.

"Thanks, Aunt Paige," Wyatt said with a grin, testing out his arm. "Much better."

"I'm not hurt," Ben said with a shrug, looking over at Nixa.

"Me neither," the blonde said. "Well, okay, I _was _but I fixed that myself and my super-healing will take care of the rest by the morning. I'll be good by then, thanks."

"Sure?" Paige asked, holding out her hands. "It's no bother otherwise… It's not like I'm gonna land you with a medical bill afterwards or anything. I promise. I mean, I totally should but I won't, just because the Elders might get a little sniffy about it. They're like that."

"I think you've got us all," Nixa said. "Except, you know, Ken. Then again, he needs healing of an entirely different kind," she ended dryly. "What do you think possessed him to do that?"

"Obsession is a powerful thing, I guess," Paige replied with a shrug. "It was made worse by the powers he had, though, don't forget that. You can't blame it all on him, no matter how easy it would be."

"Well, it was creepy and I'm glad the weasel is officially over me, whatever happens," Bridget chimed in with. She, healed second after Chris and before the walking wounded, had been hovering at the doorway between the sunroom and the dining room, leaning against the doorjamb. She pushed herself off and walked a few steps into the room.

"Uh, Bridget…?" Ben tried, looking pointedly into the dining room behind her.

"What?" she asked, wrinkling her face up at Ben incredulously. "What's wrong with that? It's true. The freak made my skin crawl." She shuddered theatrically and then froze, hearing someone clearing their throat behind her. "Oh. I know that look now. He's also right behind me, isn't he?"

"Your mouth, it is so large, but we love you anyway," Ben said with a grin, leaping off the loveseat to avoid Bridget, who had strode towards him her fist clenched.

Bridget narrowed her eyes at the witch and waved her fist threateningly before turning around and looking at Ken. The freshman was still pale and seemed to be even smaller then he had been before, if that were possible, and she did feel a small amount of sympathy for him, no matter what he had done and no matter what she would say to the contrary. He looked washed out and world-weary, which wasn't an expression she wanted to see on a fourteen-year-old. Although she was only a year older than him, she felt that no one with a normal life deserved to have any reason to look like that at such a young age.

Her, yes. She'd fought demons for a long time. She'd seen their evil and, worse, through her lifestyle she'd seen human evil. She'd seen the deepest darkest depths of the human psyche because of what evil had done to people. Sometimes, she even touched upon things in herself that scared her, things that she never wanted to visit again if she could help it. It had changed her, definitely. If she ever looked like that, she had good reason to. But someone like Ken, someone who should have had an ordinary life and not known about all of the shit that hung around out there waiting to get you… She sighed. "Freeze him," she said softly to Chris.

"What?" the witch-whitelighter asked.

"Do it," she commanded, shaking her head.

Chris gave her one last strange look and obliged with a flick of his wrists. The freshman froze where he stood, leaning against the doorframe as if it were the only thing holding him up in the world. It probably was. "What for?" Chris asked, shoving his hands back into his pockets.

Bridget ignored him, suddenly determined to fix the problem. "Is there a memory spell?" she asked Paige, turning away from the rest of the group and appealing directly to the youngest Charmed One.

"Uh… sure," Paige informed Bridget uncertainly, cocking her head sideways slightly as she thought. "I think so. Piper will know. About where it is in the Book, I mean… Piper!"

Piper bumped the door between the kitchen and the dining room open with her hip and, apologising into the phone and then pressing it to her shoulder yelled at Paige, "I'm on the phone!" She put the receiver back to her ear. "I know Mrs Rexel. Well yes. Thank you for your concern… I think one of the kids might have knocked the knob on the gas burner and then just that one spark… I know. Yes, I know. I appreciate how loud it was, Mrs Rexel, I really do, but… Yes. Okay…" Her voice faded away as she swung back through the door into the devastated kitchen.

Paige made a face at her departed sister, rolling her eyes heavily. "Fine…" she said, semi-dangerously, narrowing her eyes and pouting at the closed kitchen door and looked up to the ceiling. "Book of Shadows!" she called. "I will look myself. And if anything goes awry, it shall all be her fault." The called-for tome appeared in a swirl of orbs on top of the coffee table, dislodging a pot plant. The pot shattered and dark earth spewed all over the white tiles. Paige winced sharply, hissing air in through her teeth. "I'll clean that up. No one tell Piper. Now… Where are we…?"

"Did someone just orb the book?" a disembodied voice called from the top of the staircase. Footsteps sounded and Phoebe appeared downstairs. "Didn't we all have a conversation about how rude that was?"

"What were you doing with it, anyway?" Paige asked dismissively, heaving the volume onto her lap and flicking the cover open.

"Looking up Zeema," Phoebe replied. "I told you we needed to vanquish her. I was actually being serious, you know. I think she could be an actual threat, especially now she's got her powers back."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. So's every demonic being in here," Paige reminded her darkly, rolling her eyes and continuing to search through the Book. "That can wait. We need a memory spell."

"As in to erase a memory?" Phoebe questioned. "What for?"

Paige shrugged and continued to skim through the parchment pages aimlessly, taking the Book chunks at a time. "I don't know. Ask Bridget."

Bridget sighed and looked over to Ken again. "It's just… He's had the potion now. The powers are out of him. But all of the memory and stuff… that's still with him. He's got to go around knowing that there actually are things that go bump in the night, you know? And that's gotta suck. I'm not worried about him telling anyone, I mean, I threatened to tear out his liver and make him eat it if he did—"

"She's such a lady," Ben jumped in with, nodding his head agreeably. "So modest and feminine."

"I'm going to test the theory of whether humans need their heads to live on you in a minute," Bridget warned Ben, glowering darkly at the witch. "_Anyway,_" she continued pointedly, shooting one more death glare at Ben, "I was just thinking… he doesn't _have _to remember and it's probably better for him that he doesn't, you know? It just seems fairer that way, that's all."

"I think Bridget might be empathising. I do believe she's putting herself in someone else's shoes," Ben said in mock amazement. He staggered sideways in overblown shock and clutched the sideboard. "What is wrong with the world?"

"Oh, you know what?" Bridget asked, rolling up her sleeves. "You are so—"

"Hey, hey, hey!" Paige shouted, holding her arm out to stop Bridget as she advanced on Ben. "No fighting. One, I'm not doing another round of healing a two Piper's already having a fit over the kitchen. We're talking full-scale head explosion if anything else gets broken."

"You mean like a potted plant?" Chris asked wryly, his mouth twisting into a smirk.

"Hey, didn't ask for input from my smart-ass nephew, did I?" Paige scolded playfully, giving him a fake stern look. "But you're right. I should do something about that… Plant!" The mess orbed out of the floor and disappeared. Orbing lights appeared outside at the far end of the garden in a flower bed and then dissipated. "There. She won't look there for a while. And, if anyone tells her what I did there'll be dire consequences. Got it?" She cocked an eyebrow and fixed everyone in the room, even Phoebe, with a warning look, piercing them with her index finger as she did so.

Phoebe shook her head. "Personal gain," she chided amusedly and automatically. "You don't wanna do that, do you?"

"Oh, the Powers That Be can bite me," Paige snorted dismissively. "Just that once, they can deal with it." She looked down at the Book again and sighed heavily, listlessly turning a page and reading the back of it. "This could take a while," she told Bridget, licking a finger to make turning the pages easier.

"Give it here," Chris finally half-snapped, lunging forward from his seat and ending what he considered a painful display by his aunt.

"Hey, hey Grabby," Paige admonished reproachfully, leaning backwards and shifting the Book out of Chris's reach. "I can do it. I was doing this before you were born, you know."

"Aunt Paige, Chris has no life, remember? He's spent every second since he learned to read with his head in that thing. He knows it inside out," Wyatt remarked slyly, smirking at his little brother.

"Shut up, Wyatt," Chris replied defensively, narrowing his eyes at his brother.

"Oh, take a joke," Wyatt dismissed with a roll of his eyes and a wave of his hand. "For God's sake, lighten up. I'd say live a little but, you know, we don't want to take things too fast…"

"Oh, funny," Chris snapped back moodily, reaching forward and taking the Book from his aunt's lap. "You're so funny. I'm so glad I'm your brother."

"Kids…" Phoebe began warningly, looking sternly at her nephews. "Play nice," she commanded when she had their attention. "I don't need you fighting on top of everything else."

Wyatt shrugged in reply and Chris rolled his eyes heavily and buried himself in the Book of Shadows, skipping an entire section he knew that the spell wasn't in and beginning to flick through the pages with much more purpose than Paige had been searching with.

The front door clicked and then squeaked open, and then quietly clicked closed again. Footsteps tip-toed across the floor in the hall. Paige looked at her watch and then narrowed her eyes, crossing quietly to the doorway to the sunroom just as her daughter began on the staircase.

"Did your watch stop?" she asked brightly, smirking as her daughter jumped and spun around on the stairs, gripping the banister with shock.

"Mom! Hi, Mom. I… didn't see you there. Did you have a good night?" Patience replied falteringly, her voice squeaky and her eyes still widened nervously.

"What time do you call this? Aren't we a little late home?" Paige enquired neutrally, folding her arms across her chest and leaning against the doorjamb. "Did you forget your curfew?"

Patience snorted and came back down the stairs. "This so isn't fair. This is the first time in forever you've actually gone out somewhere and left me to it. Okay, so I might be a little late home, but, technically, aren't you also early? So if _you _had come home on time, there wouldn't be this ugly scene and I could be getting down to some serious cramming right now. So, really, because you came home early, this is all _your _fault," she ended, her face brightening slightly. "I can't be to blame at all. So, anyway, love you, Mom, Aunt Phoebe, too. As for everyone else who's there I like you on kind of a sliding scale thing and I'm going upstairs to bed. Night!" She disappeared in a swirl of orbs through the ceiling.

"Ugh. I hate it when they have a point," Paige groused, pulling a face and turning back into the sunroom. "It makes my job that much harder. You know, being a parent is hard. Why does no one tell you that?"

"Well, I would have thought the whole labour thing would have been a big indicator of what was to come," Phoebe mused absently, blankly watching Chris flip through the Book.

"Hey for you losers that had a natural birth, maybe," Paige sniffed, crossing the room to sit back in her seat. "I had twins. They knocked me out, sliced me open and before I knew it I was a mom. For eighteen years…"

"You know, you're bad-mouthing kids in a room full of… kids," Ben observed. "How wise, on a scale of one to ten, do you think that is right about now?"

Paige shook her head and waved a hand. "Nah. My kids know the situation. I love them dearly but they drive me crazy and cost me a fortune. Not that I'd ever deny them anything but it's just… the _shoes _their college funds could buy me is kinda painful to think about." She sighed, pausing. "You know, even though I love them, _why _did I have kids?"

"Six month anniversary with your boyfriend, romantic ski lodge, severe lack of condoms," Chris filled his aunt in shortly and dryly. "Thanks for telling me that story, by the way. Eight months on the couch right in that little anecdote," he muttered, not taking his eyes off the Book.

"Oh yeah… I forgot about that…" Paige mused. "Oh well. If anyone else asks, I'll just say it was a clever ploy to land me my husband. Who I also love dearly even though he drives me crazy… You know, where is that man?"

"He went to his niece's graduation," Wyatt duhed. "He told you this morning. In front of all of us? There was a serious display of public affection and then he left. It was, like… fourteen hours ago."

Paige smiled goofily. "That was a good kiss."

"Got it!" Chris shouted triumphantly, not sure if he was happier that he had found the spell or that he had broken up his aunt's gross rambling. "Okay, Ken. Prepare to say goodbye to the last couple of days…"

_**Quiet Please, I'm Stalking**_

Nixa had the end of a strand of blonde hair in her mouth and was chewing on it absently as she pondered over the indecipherable mess that was Advanced Calculus. She frowned mildly at the text book with her eyes narrowed, tapping the eraser on the top of her pencil against the Formica tabletop. A shadow suddenly fell across her spread out belongings and she jumped, alarmed, swiftly dragging the hair from her mouth and sweeping it behind her ear, hoping no one had seen.

"Hey, Twitchy. Someone's been at the triple espressos, no?" Ben asked amusedly, grinning as she glowered at him before sliding her books across the table and closing them, starting to pack them up.

"Hey," she greeted. "Not my fault. You and your big hulking shadow scared the life out of me." She stacked her books in a pile. "What's up?"

"He isn't blind," Ben said smugly, sitting down opposite her. "And she's very rich and they live happily ever after."

Nixa studied him for a while, her brain turning over what he'd just said. "Okay, no, sorry. Not with you. Huh?"

Ben rolled his eyes heavily. "Do you _read _any of those books or do you just hide comics behind them and read those instead? _Jane Eyre. _The love of her life isn't blind anymore and she's filthy rich, just like her lover, because her rich uncle snuffed it and left the lot to her. _I _read it, at least."

"Oh, yeah. You're so literate, Ben. I'm sure you read the whole thing," Nixa replied in a teasing deadpan.

"Hey, you know, I'm smarter than everyone gives me credit for. And okay, yeah, I didn't _read _it read it but I downloaded it and have had headphones, like surgically attached to my ears listening to it. _Man _is it long. Seriously. That's not the point, though. She marries her perfectly-sighted, rich lover, after getting rich herself, and lives happily ever after. The. End."

"Well, I don't know how many marks you'd get on a pop quiz for the book, but I think I can let it slide," Nixa told him, smiling and shaking her head. Squinting against the sun, her face fell. "Oh, God. It's Ken. Don't let him come over here…"

"He's forgotten everything, remember?" Ben reminded Nixa slowly, giving her a partially-concerned frown. "Were you _following _that night at all?"

Nixa gave him The Eye and paused dignifiedly before speaking. "I paid plenty of attention," she sniffed haughtily. "However, the guy still creeps me out. He tried to KILL us, especially you, or did that memory spell work it's mojo on you too?"

"Hey, you can't live in the past," Ben said with a shrug. "I mean, if I hated _every_thing that had tried to kill me… Wow. That's a lot of hatred, you know?"

Nixa narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously. "This is… odd. This is not you. This is some weird Hippy-Ben that I've never met before. You've done something, haven't you?"

"You think so little of me," Ben sniffed, looking down at the bright red tabletop and flicking an ant scurrying across it towards Nixa's books. He looked back up at Nixa and was slightly alarmed to find her still staring at him incredulously. "What? I may have looked his locker number up and I may have filled his locker full of conjured slugs. That doesn't make me a bad person. He _did _try to kill me."

"I thought you couldn't live in the past?" Nixa prompted amusedly, failing to suppress a grin. "And what about personal gain?"

"Eh. They'll disappear eventually," he said with a shrug, waving a dismissive hand. "It was a crappy spell and I didn't put _that _much effort in. Personally, I think he's lucky that it was nothing poisonous with huge fangs. That could jump."

"Don't blame me when you get all smote by the Powers That Be for this," Nixa said warningly. "I wash my hands of it."

"Well, if they ask, I'll just blame Chris. They probably like him more than me, what with the whole Charmed heritage thing. It'll be fine."

"Really?" Nixa asked. "Somehow, I think that plan has some flaws…"

"It's a Ben Olsen plan," Ben scoffed. "Flaws? I laugh in the face of flaws. Ha!"

Nixa smiled and looked down at the dirt beneath the table and calmly crossed her legs on the bench, taking her feet entirely off the floor. "You laugh in the face of flaws?" she asked, opening her Calculus book again. "There's a swarm of ants crawling up your left leg."

Nixa laughed as Ben looked down and immediately began swatting at his lower leg, brushing the frenzied insects from his jeans. He kicked off his shoe and cursed, taking his feet off the ground in the same manner as Nixa.

"I think this might be revenge," the blonde said airily, flipping to a page she had marked by slipping her pencil into the textbook. "The Powers That Be seem to have got you good. Still thinking of blaming Chris?"

Ben didn't reply, stomping on the seething black mass and shooting daggers at Nixa, who was laughing so hard tears had begun to roll down her cheeks.

_**Quiet Please, I'm Stalking**_

_I'm well aware that this took a while and I'm sorry. I'm not so good at the whole endings thing. As some of you may have noticed from other fics I've started… heh. But it's here now. Written and published to be read and everything._

_I want to thank everyone that's read and reviewed this. It's made me happy as a lamb. Cloud? Clam? I don't remember the exact metaphor, but it's something vaguely like that, I'm sure. I know that I've slipped with my review replies and whoops, yick, but I shall try to catch up on the reviews that I get for this chapter (if any because, let's face it, you've been waiting a looooooooong while). _

_Anyway, I'm on the lookout for a new fandom, I think. Or maybe not. I've had a couple of Chris and Wyatt spin off ideas in my head that won't go away so I might have a crack at those or I might just break free of _Charmed _all together. It is, you know, over and all… Le sigh. Anyway, um… I was going somewhere with this. I was, I was, I was but… nope. My brain, it is dead so I'll end my ramblings here and spare you anymore misery._

_Hope you've all had fun with this. I did._

_**Twisted Flame**_


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